"Guess Who" Beat "Congeniality"

No guesses needed to discover the new number one movie.

Guess Who easily secured the weekend's top slot, earning an estimated $21 million.

That was way more money than Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous, which snagged a mere $14.5 million in second place from Friday to Sunday.

Both PG-13 soft-touch comedies opened in roughly the same amount of theaters in time to vie for attention with the Easter Bunny - 3,147 for Sony's Guess Who, a comedic remake of the 1967 classic racial issues dramedy Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and 3,183 for the sequel to Sandra Bullock's cute 2000 FBI action comedy Miss Congeniality).

Distributor Warners tried--but failed--to give Bullock's new caper a jump on the competition by opening Thursday rather than on Good Friday.

As a result of winning the play-off, Sony was able to secure its fourth number one opening of the year, following Hitch (a major hit, still in the top ten in its seventh week, with a current gross of $166.4 million), Are We There Yet? and Boogeyman.

Guess Who reverses the ethnic clash of the original (starring Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier) to headline Bernie Mac flipping his lid as a possessive dad encountering his daughter's fiancé (Ashton Kutcher).

The film averaged $6,673 per site. Rory Bruer, president of domestic distribution at Sony, noted to Reuters and the Associated Press that the combination of buddy movie and romantic comedy played "very broadly" and proved successful probably because "it's fun."

In contrast, Bullock's retread of her goofy agent character who nabs the baddies before they make mince meat of a beauty pageant queen only averaged $4,560 over the weekend, while its extra day on screens only nudged its current gross to $17.6 million.

However, though Congeniality failed to nab the top slot, its opening weekend take topped the debut $10 million of the original, which went on to earn a successful $106 million.

Last weekend's number one--Dreamworks' scare sequel The Ring Two--suffered a scary 61 percent drop to third place, as, apparently, word of mouth filtered out that it wasn't scary enough.

Holding better were Fox's 'toon Robots, only dropping 38 percent, earning $13 million in fourth place to bring its three-week gross to $87.3 million, and Disney's Vin Diesel comedy The Pacifier, only dropping 32 percent, earning $8.5 million in fifth place to bring its four-week gross to $86.2 million

In limited release, the top per screen average was for The Ballad of Jack and Rose, a dramatic treatise on a father-daughter relationship, directed by Rebecca Miller (daughter of the late, great playwright Arthur Miller) and starring her husband, Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis, in the role of the dad. At just four sites the R-rated IFC Films release opened with $15,115 average for a total of $60,461.

At just one site, ThinkFilm's wine documentary Mondovino, which opened Wednesday, slurped up $11,525 over the weekend, while at 45 sites, Destination's PG-13 D.E.B.S, a lesbian themed spoof of the spy chick genre, averaged $1,250, grossing $56,250.

At five screens, Tartan Films' R-rated Oldboy, the Korean movie of gruesome revenge, which won the Grand Prix last year at the Cannes Film Festival, roughed up $75,000.

Expanded to 95 theaters in twelve cities, after one weekend at a record-setting single site in New York, Woody Allen's double-take look at romance, Melinda and Melinda, starring Will Ferrell and Radha Mitchell, averaged $8,316 for $790,000 to bring its two week gross to just over $1 million. Fox Searchlight, which will continue to unspool the movie until it reaches nationwide release next month, reports that the "combo of Will and Woody" is proving attractive and its success in some suburban multiplexes suggests it has appeal beyond Allen's normal core fans.

Overall, the top 12 movies grossed $90.8 million, down 15 percent from this time last year, which was not Easter weekend.

Easter, a time for family and religious observations, is not considered a major theater-going weekend, with Sunday usually a particularly weak day. However, this year's take was also down 7.1 percent from the 2004 Easter weekend, when Mel Gibson's religious tract The Passion of the Christ topped the chart, and also 13.7 percent lower than last weekend.

Final figures are due Monday. Meantime, Exhibitor Relations reports these estimates for the top ten movies in North America.

1. Guess Who, $21 million
2. Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous, $14.5 million
3. The Ring Two, $13.8 million
4. Robots, $13 million
5. The Pacifier, $8.5 million
6. Hitch, $4.3 million
7. Hostage, $4.1 million
8. Ice Princess, $3.7 million
9. Be Cool, $2.8 million
10. Million Dollar Baby, $2.6 million