Audiences die for 'Zombieland'

By Sarah Sluis

Combining the classic opening weekend winner, the horror genre, with an 89% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Zombieland went straight to number one at the box office, bringing in $25 million. The number exceeds the reported production budget, making this movie an out-of-the-gate winner for Sony.

The studio also had the second place film of the week, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. The 3D animated movie earned $16.7 million with just a 33% drop from last week, even as it shed 142 locations.

Right behind it was its 3D animated rival, the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D double feature. The re-release brought in $12.5 million. Because it opened in a smaller number of theatres, its per-location average bested that of Cloudy, $7,100 to $5,600.

The Invention of Lying opened at $7.3 million, despite its dismal reviews. By contrast, the well-reviewed Whip It opened three spots lower, with a gross of $4.8 million. However, the movie sneaked in 500 locations the week before, so the studio likely has an extra million or so in its cumulative gross. If Fox Searchlight's predictions come true, the movie could play well in coming weeks due to positive word-of-mouth.

Increasing 1,990% from last week, Capitalism: A Love Story also opened at $4.8 million. Its first wide opening weekend matches that of Sicko, so it's likely to end up in the $20-25 million range.

Among specialty releases, The Coen Brothers' A Serious Man racked up a quarter million at its six locations for a per-theatre average of $41,00. While the Coens' movies have a large number of fans that likely turned out opening weekend, and many expect this to be one of their smaller films, the large average indicates that this film is in for a healthy, robust run at the box office.

In its second weekend of release in college towns, Paranormal Activity went from 12 to 33 locations, and brought in $16,200 at each. The unusual release strategy appears to be paying off--the movie brought in $535,000 this week, for a cumulative gross of $780,000.

LeBron James documentary More Than a Game debuted with $197,000 gathered from its 14 locations, with a per-location average of $14,071. Well-reviewed, the payoff for this movie may be in its tie-ins, since Nike has been heavily cross-promoting the doc.

In its second week, Coco Before Chanel added 11 locations and $220,000 to its gross, with a healthy $13,750 per screen.

This week, Universal comedy Couples Retreat should head up the box office, and the much-buzzed potential awards movie An Education begins its platform release.