Penn, Zombies Make B.O. Killing

Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and the Beatles had good weekends. A bunch of zombies had the biggest.

Resident Evil: Extinction, the third installment in the undead-populated, videogame-spawned series, topped the weekend box office with a franchise-best $23.7 million, per final Exhibitor Relations tallies Monday.

According to the box-office tracking firm, Resident Evil: Extinction is the seventh "threequel" released this year—and the seventh to open number one.

The movie, which returns Milla Jovovich to the zombie wars, is also only the second actress-led movie of 2007 to debut in first. Jodie Foster's The Brave One, which fell to third this weekend with $7.4 million ($25.1 million overall) was the firstto achieve that feat last weekend.

Penn, Pitt and the Beatles all had their good—and in one case, great—weekends in limited release.

The Penn-written and -directed Into the Wild, the true story of a privileged young man (Emile Hirsch) who listened to his inner Jack London and made tracks for Alaska, had a phenomenal weekend-best average of $53,110 at four locations ($212,440 overall). By comparison, Resident Evil: Extinction averaged $8,373 at each of its 2,828 theaters.

Pitt's long-shelved Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a western that began filming so long ago that, at the time, its star was still formally married to Jennifer Aniston, averaged $29,562 at five theaters ($147,812 overall)—second best among the weekend's reported movies.

In its second weekend, the Beatles-driven art musical Across the Universe added more than 250 theaters and nearly moved into the top 10, with $2 million ($2.9 million overall).

For those who are more impressed with eight-figure grosses, may we call your attention to the second-place debut of Good Luck Chuck, the Dane Cook-Jessica Alba comedy that grossed $13.7 million, or about $10 for every pratfall suffered in the trailer. The performance marked an improvement over Cook's first feature comedy vehicle, Employee of the Month, which bowed with $11.4 million last fall.

Elsewhere, the David Cronenberg-helmed mob movie Eastern Promises broke far and wide in its second weekend, tattooing $5.6 million ($6.4 million overall) for a fifth-place finish.

Sydney White—the college-set, Amanda Bynes-led retelling of the classic Snow White story—lived unhappily, thanks to a weak sixth-place debut ($5.2 million).

In its eighth week, The Bourne Ultimatum moved past the $220 million mark, with another $2.9 million (ninth place). It is already the biggest grossing Bourne, raking in more than $40 million over 2004's The Bourne Supremacy.

Rush Hour 3 ($2.2 million; $136.1 million overall), which exited the top 10 after six weekends, turned out to be the lowest grossing entry in the Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker franchise. Worse, it came up nearly $100 million shy of the franchise's most recent entry, 2001's Rush Hour 2.

Also falling out of the top slots were Halloween ($2.2 million; $54.6 million overall), gone after three short weeks—and long before its namesake holiday; and Balls of Fury ($1.7 million; $31.3 million overall), gone after three unlikely weeks.

Long-dead Jane Austen, meanwhile, lent her very much alive drawing power to yet another art-house romantic drama, helping The Jane Austen Book Club to a respectable $148,549 debut at 25 theaters.

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

1. Resident Evil: Extinction, $23.7 million
2. Good Luck Chuck, $13.7 million
3. The Brave One, $7.3 million
4. 3:10 to Yuma, $6.2 million
5. Eastern Promises, $5.6 million
6. Sydney White, $5.2 million
7. Mr. Woodcock, $4.9 million
8. Superbad, $3.1 million
9. The Bourne Ultimatum, $2.9 million
10. Dragon Wars, $2.6 million

(Originally published Sept. 23, 2007 at 3:07 p.m. PT.)