"Flightplan" Lands over "Corpse"

It was up, up and away as Flightplan soared to the top of the box office.

The Jodie Foster airplane thriller landed an estimated $24.6 million from Friday to Sunday to lead the fourth straight up weekend from last year, according to the tracking service Exhibitor Relations.

Expanding wide from last week's very limited opening, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride also dug up big business at the megaplex, with $20.1 million.

Disney's PG-13 Flightplan, starring Foster as a widowed mom trying to find her vanished daughter on a transatlantic jaunt, touched down in 3,424 sites, averaging $7,198. The film's tally was the second-best ever for the Oscar winner, behind her 2002 claustrophobic nail-biter Panic Room, which opened with $30 million, averaging $9,845 per 3,053 theaters.

Disney has been out of the opening top slot for several months, so the studio was delighted that its Buena Vista division's Flightplan was able to rise above Warner Bros.' PG-rated Corpse Bride, which some prognosticators had thought might have been the top attraction. However, Warners' distribution chief Dan Fellman tells the Associated Press his studio had not expected to be number one and was "thrilled" the movie had attracted the best-ever business in September for an animated work.

The latest curiosity from the mind of Tim Burton, featuring the voice of Johnny Depp as a stop-motion character who mistakenly weds a dead woman (voiced by Burton's off-screen love, Helena Bonham Carter), was unearthed in 3,204 theaters--after opening in just five last weekend--and averaged $6,283 per. Its two-week tally stands at $20.6 million.

Bouncing into fourth place was Fox Searchlight's PG-13 Roll Bounce. The Bow Wow-fronted roller-skating flick grossed $8 million. A studio spokesman said the distributor was "very pleased" with the tally, considering (a) Hurricane Rita cut down expected business in the South and (b) the film opened in just 1,625 theaters, where it averaged a respectable $4,923.

That was well above the $2,793 average at 3,509 sites registered for last week's number one, Reese Witherspoon's romantic fantasy Just Like Heaven, which was down 40 percent to $9.8 million in third place.

In limited release, the movie attracting the most business was A History of Violence, David Cronenberg's ghoulishly wry exploration of the impact of violence on an American family starring Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris and William Hurt. The favorably reviewed R-rated New Line release averaged $36,000 at just 14 sites for $504,000.

Roman Polanski's take on the classic Charles Dickens' orphan tale Oliver Twist also showed promise. At just five sites, the PG-13 Sony/Tri-Star release, starring Oscar winner Ben Kingsley as Fagin, averaged $13,800 for $69,000.

Daltry Calhoun, another Miramax toss-off, starring Johnny Knoxville as a hayseed who sees the fortune he made growing sod for golf courses dry up, shot a bogey, averaging $566 at 13 sites for $7,358.

Now in its sixth week, Universal's The 40-Year-Old Virgin continues to close in on the $100 million mark, seducing $4.3 million in seventh place for $96.9 million.

With Flightplan and Corpse Bride leading the way with more than $20 million each, the top 12 films grossed an estimated $89.1 million. That's up 51 percent over this time last year, when another thriller about a mom with a child in peril--The Forgotten--opened with $21 million. Business was also up a solid 26 percent over last weekend.

Final figures are due Monday; meantime, this is how the top 10 line up, per Exhibitor Relations:

1. Flightplan, $24.6 million
2. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, $20.1 million
3. Just Like Heaven, $9.8 million
4. Roll Bounce, $8 million
5. The Exorcism of Emily Rose, $7.5 million
6. Lord of War, $4.9 million
7. The 40-Year-Old Virgin, $4.3 million
8. The Constant Gardener, $2.2 million
9. Transporter 2, $2.15 million
10. Cry Wolf, $2.1 million