Another Scary Weekend for Hollywood

In another dead week for the movie business, the undead were the liveliest stiffs around.

The new Josh Hartnett vampire flick, 30 Days of Night, topped the weak weekend box office with $16 million, per studio tallies compiled by Exhibitor Relations Monday.

Wristcutters: A Love Story, the independent comedy about suicide victims in a quirky afterlife, was an even bigger hit, relatively, scoring $42,808 at just three theaters for a weekend-best $14,269 per-screen average.

Last week's champ, Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, fell to second, with $12.2 million ($39 million overall), but did more business, per theater, than 30 Days of Night ($5,991 to $5,587).

Overall, ticket sales were down 8 percent when compared to the same weekend last year. After a record-setting summer, this was Hollywood's fifth straight down weekend.

The fall of the box office coincided with the rise of the fall drama. From George Clooney's Michael Clayton (fifth place, $6.7 million; $21.6 million overall) to Cate Blanchett's Elizabeth: The Golden Age ($3.2 million; $11.2 million overall—and already out of the top 10), the studios' Oscar vehicles have failed to move ticket buyers.

This weekend, the new Patriot Act-era drama, Rendition, starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, continued the tradition, earning less on 2,250 screens (ninth place, $4.1 million) than the 3-D rerelease of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas pulled in at 564 theaters (eighth place, $5.3 million).

Compared to the lower box-office moments of Ben Affleck's acting career, his directing debut, the missing-child thriller Gone Baby Gone, opened respectably with $5.5 million (sixth place). But despite uniformly good reviews, and Oscar buzz for star Casey Affleck, brother of Ben, the bow was half as big as that of Mystic River, the Clint Eastwood-directed thriller that was based, like Gone Baby Gone, on a Boston-set novel by author Dennis Lehane.

In only its second weekend, another thriller, We Own the Night, looked gone, baby, gone, slipping to seventh place ($5.4 million; $19.7 million overall).

Halle Berry, Benicio Del Toro and their combined two Oscars didn't fire up audiences about their new drama, Things We Lost in the Fire, which grossed only $1.6 million at more than 1,100 theaters, and failed to crack the top 10.

Another wide release, the family-friendly ghost movie Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour, came up even smaller, with just $586,283 from 1,121 theaters.

The all-new Ten Commandments—to clarify, the movie's new (and animated), the commandments are the same—was smited, as well: $479,910 from 830 theaters.

A sports spoof wasn't the answer for the box-office's woes, either. Just a couple months after a ping-pong comedy, Balls of Fury, pulled in $11.4 million in its first weekend, The Comebacks settled for $5.6 million (fifth place).

With its fall off to a slow start, Hollywood should give thanks next month for the thespian formally known only as the Rock. In its fourth weekend, The Game Plan kept up its winning ways, bringing in another $8.2 million (third place), and nearing the $70 million mark overall.

Things looked brighter on the art-house circuit, where The Darjeeling Limited ($1.3 million at 202 theaters) and Lars and the Real Girl ($188,603 at 21 theaters) continued to shine.

Here's a rundown of the top 10 films based on final Friday-Sunday studio figures compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

1. 30 Days of Night, $16 million
2. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, $12.2 million
3. The Game Plan, $8.2 million
4. Michael Clayton, $6.7 million
5. The Comebacks, $5.6 million
6. Gone Baby Gone, $5.5 million
7. We Own the Night, $5.4 million
8. Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, $5.3 million
9. Rendition, $4.1 million
10. The Heartbreak Kid, $3.8 million

(Originally published Oct. 21, 2007 at 3:49 p.m. PT.)