It was a pretty wet weekend at the US box office, as the Superbowl kept people at home in their millions (despite the fact that there were practically no film trailers at half time, and apparently no wardrobe malfunctions either. Really, what's the point?). So it was that The Messengers took the top spot at the box office with a fairly measly $14.5 million.
That's the fourth time in five years that a horror film has taken the lead on Superbowl weekend, after Darkness Falls, Boogeyman and **When A Stranger Calls **(You Got Served briefly broke the trend in 2004). Distributors, traditionally scared by the fact that every red-blooded American male will be watching football all day Sunday, tend to programme cheap, teen-friendly horror and / or rom-coms for that weekend.
Therefore it's no surprise that Because I Said So, the Diane Keaton / Mandy Moore mother-daughter comedy came in second with $13 million. The good news is that the two top films knocked Epic Movie down to third place, with a drop of 55.8% to $8.2 million. If you think that's a sign that US audiences just regained their sanity, think again; that's still more than **Pan's Labyrinth, Letters from Iwo Jima **and **Notes on a Scandal **combined. Night at the Museum on the other hand, is still in fourth place, with a tiny 29% drop on last week in its seventh week on release, and a total so far of $225 million. Expect the sequel to be announced any day now.
The good news is that Pan's Labyrinth is still doing relatively well; with another $3.7 million in the bank, it is now the highest-grossing Spanish language film in the US ever. Among other awards contenders, both The Queen and The Departed did well, with $2.3 and $2.7 million each. But Letters from Iwo Jima almost doubled the number of theatres and still dropped its box office total, in a further blow to its awards buzz.
And now, the charts!
1
The Messenger
$14,500,000
$14,500,000
1
2
Because I Said So $13,022,000
$13,022,000
1
3
Epic Movie
$8,225,000
$29,369,000
2
4
Night At The Museum
$6,750,000
$225,365,000
7
5
Smokin' Aces $6,324,000
$24,955,000
2
6
Stomp The Yard
$4,200,000
$56,001,000
4
7
Dreamgirls
$4,048,000
$92,795,000
8
8
Pan's Labyrinth
$3,663,000
$21,969,000
6
9
The Pursuit of Happyness
$3,100,000
$157,351,000
8
10
The Queen
$2,710,000
$45,522,000
19