"Angels" Throttles "Hulk"

The bodacious babes out-muscled the big green guy.

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle flew in to first place this weekend with $37.6 million.

While that was a bit less heavenly than the original Charlie's Angels movie, which grossed $40.1 million its opening weekend in November 2000, the troika of Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu still had more than enough to wallop The Hulk down to second place, where it earned an $18.8 million, according to final studio figures Monday.

But with Sony's reteaming of the Angels' triumvirate (alongside Bernie Mac as a new Bosley and against Demi Moore as a fallen angel) failing to outstrip the intake of the original and the extremely sharp 70 percent plummet of Universal's The Hulk, it was the third down weekend in a row for the overall national box office compared to this time last year. A year ago, the top 12 movies earned $131.3 million; this weekend the tally was $112.4 million, a 15 percent dropoff and 21 percent lower than last weekend.

Despite its huge dip, The Hulk (which debuted lower than expected last weekend with $62.1 million) just managed to cross the $100 million mark, the 10th film this year to do so. Its take now stands at $100.6 million.

While Angels and The Hulk failed to match the hype, one new released debuted solidly above expectations: the end-of-the-world-is-nigh horror flick 28 Days Later. In fourth place, the Fox Searchlight release, which only cost a teeny-weeny $8 million to produce, compared to the gazillion-dollar budgets for Angels and The Hulk, earned its dough, taking in $10 million.

Helmed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, The Beach), the R-rated 28 Days Later, focusing on a diseased world infected with zombies averaged $7,986 per screen at 1,260 sites. That easily surpassed The Hulk's per-screen stats--the Marvel monster moved into 3,674 sites (up 14 from opening weekend) and averaged $5,130. The PG-13 Angels, meanwhile, was tops among wide releases, averaging $10,880 per screen at 3,459 sites

Jeff Blake, head of worldwide marketing and distribution for Columbia Pictures, a unit of Sony, told Reuters he was not disappointed with Angels' debut.

"To us, at least, if we can exceed the worldwide total of the first one, we'll be happy," said Blake, who reported that in Japan the new movie had already earned $6.2 million, double the previous film's debut. (The first movie eventually made $125 million in North American, and another $138 million overseas.)

Meantime, Universal's president of distribution, Nikko Rocco, admitted being upset with the savage decline of the The Hulk, telling Reuters, "Obviously we're very disappointed. You never want to see this kind of drop." Several Wall Street types have predicted that if The Hulk continues its precipitous decline, it could mean the end of what was supposed to be a new superhero film franchise.

But there was still plenty of good news for Disney and Pixar. Although Finding Nemo was down a spot to third place, it is still performing swimmingly. The animated fish tale only lost about one-third of last week's haul, despite being flushed from 71 sites. In its fifth week it earned $14 million, averaging $4,191 at 3,333 locations.

The G-rated family favorite has now grossed $254 million in the U.S. and will soon surpass the companies' previous record setting 'toon, Monsters, Inc., as well as this year's top-grossing film The Matrix Reloaded, in 11th place on the chart this weekend with $2.6 million and an overall gross of $269 million after seven weeks in theaters.

Finally, in the 15-minutes-are-up category, the American Idol-themed From Justin to Kelly, which opened to a piddling $2.7 million last weekend should be out of theaters any second now after grossing just $625,000 in its second week. The musical, budgeted at $12 million, has made just $4.6 million.

Here's a rundown of the top 10, as compiled by Exhibitor Relations from studio tallies:

1. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, $37.6 million
2. The Hulk, $18.8 million
3. Finding Nemo, $14 million
4. 28 Days Later, $10.1 million
5. 2 Fast 2 Furious, $6.22 million
6. Bruce Almighty, $6.19 million
7. The Italian Job, $5.5 million
8. Rugrats Go Wild!, $3.6 million
9. Hollywood Homicide, $3.1 million
10. Alex & Emma, $2.6 million

(Originally published June 29, 2003 at 1:55 p.m. PT.)