UPDATE: The final standings released Monday featured a lot of flip-flopping, chiefly Cloud Atlas rising to No. 2, with $9.6 million, and Hotel Transylvania moving down to third place, with $9.4 million.
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The biggest shock of the box-office weekend?
That Ben Affleck went to No.1 with a slightly old movie? That an even-older movie, Hotel Transylvania, moved up to the No. 2 spot?
Or that Cloud Atlas, the nearly three-hour, "exasperating," "sometimes-confounding" and more-than occasionally admired Cloud Atlas, didn't flop nearly as big, if at all, as all the other major new releases?
"Anytime you have a movie like this," Hollywood.com box-office analyst Paul Degarabedian said Sunday, "you're not going to make a ton of money."
And, no, the reputedly $100 million Cloud Atlas, starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, didn't make a ton of money.
In its Friday-Sunday opening frame, the film by The Matrix's Wachowskis and Run Lola Run's Tom Twyker grossed an estimated $9.4 million.
Among the smallest wide-release debuts ever for Hanks, Cloud Atlas nonetheless posted the largest per-screen average of any film in the Top 10, and bested fellow newcomers Silent Hill: Revelation 3D ($8 million), Fun Size ($4.1 million) and the Gerard Butler surfing movie, Chasing Mavericks ($2.2 million), which didn't even make the Top 10.
Perhaps expectedly, the much-debated Cloud Atlas was graded a C-plus by opening-weekend audiences. (By comparison, Chasing Mavericks was rated a B-plus its few and proud ticket buyers.)
"We'll see how it plays out," Warner Bros. exec Dan Fellman said. "It's got a ways to go."
Overall, it was a scary, as in bad, pre-Halloween weekend for Hollywood. Last weekend's champ, Paranormal Activity 4, dropped like one of the all-time rocks, with business falling off 70 percent.
Affleck's Argo ($12.4 million), which opened Oct. 12, claimed its first win in three tries. To date, the Oscar buzz film has grossed some $60 million domestically.
In its fifth weekend, Hotel Transylvania ($9.5 million) broke $130 million domestically.
Here's a rundown of the weekend's top movies, per Friday-Sunday domestic estimates as reported by the studios and Exhibitor Relations:
- Argo, $12.4 million
- Hotel Transylvania, $9.5 million
- Cloud Atlas, $9.4 million
- Paranormal Activity 4, $8.7 million
- Taken 2, $8 million
- Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, $8 million
- Here Comes the Boom, $5.5 million
- Sinister, $5.07 million
- Alex Cross, $5.05 million
- Fun Size, $4.1 million
(Originally published Oct. 28, 2012 at 10:44 a.m. PT.)