"Chainsaw" Buzzes Box Office

It was indeed a massacre.

The latest rehash of the killer thriller The Texas Chainsaw Massacre sliced and diced the competition at the weekend box office, scaring up a whopping $28.1 million, according to studio figures released Monday.

Chainsaw's blood bath proved more popular than last week's list-topping gorefest, Kill Bill: Volume 1, and was nearly lethal for the relatively bloodless courtroom thriller Runaway Jury.

Leatherface's return, this time firing up the power tools to mow down the likes of Jessica Biel, marked the third-biggest October opening ever. Another cannibal-friendly tale, the Hannibal Lecter prequel Red Dragon, gobbled up $36.5 million last year.

New Line's R-rated remake of the 1974 slasher classic exceeded expectations and is heading for a big profit, considering Chainsaw was made on a low budget. Studio bean counters say the audience was predominantly young and split evenly between males and females; most theatergoers hadn't seen the original.

"Women love to be scared, perhaps more than men," Russell Schwartz, New Line's top marketing exec, told the Associated Press. "It's only the gory part that helps turn off the female audience, not so much the scary part." He also credited the presence of 7th Heaven's Biel as being a draw for young females.

Whatever, the bloody movie's arrival at 3,016 sites, where it averaged $9,315, pushed the stylish mayhem movie Kill Bill down to second place. Quentin Tarantino's revenge epic, starring Uma Thurman as a sword-wielding assassin, earned $12.4 million, averaging $4,005 per each of its 3,102 movie houses.

Although Bill dipped 44 percent, distributor Miramax was still reasonably pleased as it still beat the week's other major newcomer, Fox's PG-13 Runaway Jury.

The legal shenanigans, based on John Grisham's novel and starring Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, John Cusack and Rachel Weisz, attracted a mature audience at 2,815 sites. The film averaged $4,205 for a disappointing third-place $11.8 million opening statement.

In limited release, where films hoping for Oscar attention are beginning to show up, the winning verdict went to Sylvia. The Focus Features R-rated biopic, starring Gwyneth Paltrow as American poet/feminist icon Sylvia Plath and Daniel Craig as her glamorous British poet husband, Ted Hughes, debuted with $58,940, earned from a per-screen average of $19,647 at just three theaters.

Also attracting solid attention was Pieces of April, the tension-fraught Thanksgiving comedy starring Katie Holmes as a punkster at odds with her suburban mom (Patricia Clarkson.) At six sites, the United Artists PG-13 release averaged $8,070 to earn $48,422.

In contrast, Buena Vista's R-rated Veronica Guerin, starring Cate Blanchett as the crusading Irish journalist, only averaged $1,295 at 472 sites for $611,276.

Clint Eastwood's dark drama Mystic River, which is already attracting Oscar buzz, expanded to 1,467 and moved up to fifth place on the Top 10 list after its 17th-place debut at just 13 theaters last week. Earning $10.4 million, the R-rated Warners release starring Sean Penn and Tim Robbins averaged $7,120.

There was also good news for one of the summer hits. Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which opened in July, has now sailed passed the $300 million mark, joining the studio's other true biggie, the record-setting fish 'toon Finding Nemo. That makes Disney the first studio to achieve such a double in the same year.

Overall, the top 12 movies grossed a combined $103.2 million, for another up week--more than 5 percent above last weekend, and, notably, 40 percent better than this time last year.

Here is how the Top 10 ranked, according to receipt counter Exhibitor Relations:

1. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, $28.1 million
2. Kill Bill: Volume 1, $12.4 million
3. Runaway Jury, $11.8 million
4. School of Rock, $11 million
5. Mystic River, $10.4 million
6. Good Boy!, $8.9 million
7. Intolerable Cruelty, $6.5 million
8. Out of Time, $4 million
9. Under the Tuscan Sun, $3.4 million
10. The Rundown, $2.8 million

(Originally published October 19, 2003 at 1:40 p.m. PT.)