It takes a Village to win the box office.

Director M. Night Shyamalan's latest spooky thriller debuted with $50.7 million as the nation's new number one movie, according to final studio figures released Monday.

That was more than double the money earned by Matt Damon's spy thriller sequel The Bourne Supremacy, which in its second weekend dropped sharply to second place with $24.2 million, and also Denzel Washington's political thriller The Manchurian Candidate, which opened in third place with $20 million.

The week's other two newcomers finished further down on the chart. The low-budget slacker comedy Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle opened with a short order $5.5 million in seventh place, while the big-budget Thunderbirds, a live-action take on the cult favorite marionette TV series, didn't take wing, scoring only $2.8 million way down in 11th place.

Despite decidedly mixed critical notice, The Village, a period tale about weird stuff in the woods starring newcomer Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of Ron) alongside seasoned pros William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Adrien Brody and Joaquin Phoenix, averaged $13,605 at 3,730 theaters and attracted 36 percent of the weekend movie-going audience.

The bigger than expected opening was finally some good news for Disney, which had struck out the cineplex so far this year. The PG-13 frightfest, was, like Shyamalan's previous hit thrillers, released under the Mouse House's Buena Vista banner. The Village didn't quite match the $18,418 per-screen average/$60.1 million opening weekend for Shyamalan's 2002 crop-circling E.T. tale, Signs, headlined by Mel Gibson, which eventually earned $227.9 million domestically. But it's higher than the $12,347 average/$26.6 million debut of his 1999 I-see-dead-people shocker, The Sixth Sense, which is still his top earner with $293.5 million.

Despite getting generally good votes from the critics, The Manchurian Candidate, Jonathan Demme's update of John Frankenheimer's classic 1962 satirical thriller about political corruption and brainwashing, could only muster an average of $6,982 at 2,867 sites. That's about typical for a Washington debut.

The R-rated Paramount release, now focused on the manipulative power of corporate greed, also stars Liev Schreiber, Meryl Streep, Jon Voight and Jeffrey Wright, but the loaded casting wasn't enough to beat out Damon's The Bourne Supremacy, even through the killer-agent thriller nose-dived 54 percent from its top-rated opening weekend. Now at 3,180 sites--15 more than it debuted in--the PG-13 Universal release averaged $7,600 per screen to bring its two-week gross to $98.8 million.

Harold and Kumar Go to the White Castle, an R-rated New Line release in which pot-happy John Cho and Kal Penn go on a goofy quest for burgers, averaged $2,567 per 2,135 sites. Thunderbirds, a PG Universal release whose cast includes a bunch of kids and Oscar winner Ben Kingsley as the villain, thudded in with an average of $1,345 at 2,057 sites.

In limited release, Garden State bloomed strong. Fox Searchlight's R-rated you-can-go-home-again romantic comedy, written and directed by Scrubs' Zach Braff, who stars along with Natalie Portman and Peter Sarsgaard, had the week's best per-site average, $22,346 at nine locations, for a total of $201,115.

Paramount Classics' R-rated Intimate Strangers, French director Patrice Leconte's romantic comedy about a chance encounter between a woman (Sandrine Bonnaire) looking for a shrink, and a tax accountant (Fabrice Luchini) she mistakes for one, earned a promising $11,167 average at just five sites for $55,836.

Sony Pictures Classics' R-rated She Hate Me, Spike Lee's riff on lesbian moms and their sperm donors, could only manage an indifferent $5,001 per 11 screens for $55,016.

In the good news department, the grumpy ogre sequel Shrek 2 earned another $1.3 million, bringing its 11-week gross to $432.5 million, making the DreamWorks 'toon the fourth-highest grossing film of all time, moving ahead of Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace, which has racked up $431.1 million.

In the bad news department, Halle Berry's Catwoman is fast losing all its lives. The comic-book caper fell a screeching 61 percent, down to sixth place from its dismal third place opening last weekend. Its Friday-Sunday take was just $6.4 million, averaging only $2,068 per 3,117 screens, and its total now stands at $29.8 million.

Overall, the top 12 movies earned $142.4 million, about 3 percent more than last weekend, and 8 percent above this time last year.

Here's a rundown of the top 10, as tracked by Exhibitor Relations:

1. The Village, $50.7 million
2. The Bourne Supremacy, $23.2 million
3. The Manchurian Candidate, $20 million
4. I, Robot, $10.4 million
5. Spider-Man 2, $8.6 million
6. Catwoman, $6.4 million
7. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, $5.5 million
8. A Cinderella Story, $4.9 million
9. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, $3.13 million
10. Fahrenheit 9/11, $3.11 million

(Originally published Aug. 1, 2004 at 1:55 p.m. PT.)