The five-day Thanksgiving holiday was dedicated to leftovers it seems at the cinema with last week's big openers "Happy Feet" and "Casino Royale" still easily dominating the top two slots on both the three and five day box-office charts.
The CG animated penguins of "Happy Feet" landed a cool $37.9 million
from Friday-Sunday and $51.5 million from Wednesday-Sunday, taking its 10-day total just past the $100 million mark. With families out in droves, the win comes as no surprise but the drop of a mere 8.6% from last week's stellar debut, plus a near $10,000 per theatre taking proves the film has a lot of staying power.
James Bond
performed just as impressively with "Casino Royale" landing a $31 million haul from Friday-Sunday, and a $45.1 million take Wednesday-Sunday, bringing its 10-day total to $94 million. The $130 million budgeted film dropped just 21%, a smaller Thanksgiving fall off than almost all the previous 007 flicks, and pulled in a commanding take of a little over $9,000 per screen.
Overseas "Royale" continues to thoroughly steamroll over all competition, pulling in a whopping $222 million worldwide haul so far after its second weekend. The film holds the top spot in every new market it has opened in and is already tipped to overtake the $431 million earned by "Die Another Day" to become the most successful Bond of them all.
Back in the United States, several newcomers went to battle over Thanksgiving with only Denzel Washington time travel actioneer "Deja Vu" achieving any real success. Coming in third, the film took in $29 million over five days and $20.8 million over the three day weekend - the seventh time Washington has had a $20+ million opener this decade. Its $6,703 per screen take was also one of the more impressive.
Family Christmas comedy "Deck the Halls" also fared alright with $17 million over the five days and a fourth place position. Fox, the studio who released it, also came in fifth with hit comedy "Borat" which fell just 29% and has pulled in a very impressive $109 million domestic total so far.
The bombs this year were trippy sci-fi romance drama "The Fountain" and Jack Black's "Tenacious D" movie. Despite being passionately embraced by a select audience, "The Fountain" managed only a $5.4 million haul over the five-day weekend and a relatively ordinary $2,530 per screen take.
Even with a wider release, no-one embraced 'The D' as their "Pick of Desinty" film didn't even crack the Top Ten, whilst its $5.2 million haul from nearly 2,000 screens yielded a woeful $1,620 average screen take. Expect this baby to disappear quickly.
The smaller release front yielded some uneven results as well. Both "Bobby" and "For Your Consideration" expanded from their limited run last week, yet neither really performed well - the former managed to crack the Top Ten though.
In contrast the Penelope Cruz drama "Volver", already having been opened for a month, had the best per screen take of any film with a whopping $17,300 from each of its 30 playdates. Award-winning play adaptation "The History Boys" also scored very well with $14,428 from each of its seven screens.
