Everyone smelled what The Rock was cooking in America this weekend, and they liked it. The actor's new movie, The Game Plan, hit the number one spot with $22.7million. That's pretty good going considering the comedy, about an American footballer who's suddenly faced with looking after the daughter he never knew he had, was predicted to make somewhere in the region of $18million. The film was helped by the previews that Disney held last week – 808 of them, with 78% capacity – which helped build awareness. The film represented The Rock's second biggest opening, after The Scorpion King.
The Game Plan's victory meant that Peter Berg's Middle East drama The Kingdom was pushed into second place with $17.7million. There's a sense in America that the country isn't keen to watch films relating to troubles in the Middle East. Though The Kingdom isn't related to the Iraq war – it's actually gone to great lengths stateside to sell itself as a straight up action movie – it may have suffered because of this. There's an interesting New York Times article here about the potential problem for the likes of In The Valley Of Elah, Redacted and Lions For Lambs.
No other films could crack the top ten this week. Ensemble comedy-drama Feast of Love pooped into number 11 with a frankly rubbish $1.8million total and a screen average of $1,461. Two limited 'Hey it's nearly awards season' releases did great business. Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited took a massive screen average of $70,000 on two screens. Ang Lee's Lust, Caution took an almost-as-good $61,700 on just the one screen.
Of those already on release, 3:10 To Yuma is looking like something of a sleeper hit. The western, which opened to middling numbers four weeks ago has been holding well. It dropped only 32% this week and is now on $43million and yet to leave the top five. Based on that, it could reasonably make back its $55million budget before its DVD release. The aforementioned In The Valley of Elah's box office isn't matching up to its reviews. The critically adored movie opened wider this week, but could only manage a screen average of $2,007, which isn't terrible, but isn't great for something heavily tipped for the Oscars. Maybe the first round of awards could give it a push.