U.S Box Office Report - 14th - 16th April 2006

1. Scary Movie 4 - $41M - $41M
2. Ice Age: The Meltdown - $20M - $147M
3. The Benchwarmers - $10M - $36M
4. The Wild - $9.56M - $9.56M
5. Take the Lead - $6.7M - $22.5M
6. Inside Man - $6.3M - $75.3M
7. Lucky Number Slevin - $4.6M - $14.1M
8. Thank You for Smoking - $4.45M - $11.5M
9. Failure to Launch - $2.6M - $83.2M
10. V for Vendetta - $2.17M - $66M

For the second weekend in a row, three movies have taken over $10M. Scary Movie 4 opened very strongly, though not as well as its prequel which opened at $48M. The movie easily saw off both the old and new movies this weekend and there will be many a happy face around the Weinstein Company. While the movie may tale off big next weekend, it will also assure a fifth movie is put into production. Not bad for a franchise on its fourth movie. Like part 3, the PG-13 rating has helped the movie a great deal.

Ice Age 2 loses 40% of business from last weekend but still performs very well indeed. Now in its third weekend in the charts the movie saw off the CGI competition posed by The Wild. At the present rate the movie may well become one of the biggest of 2006.

Losing half the business from last weekend, The Benchwarmers still performed well and eased into production profit in just over a week. The success of the movie is largely being put down to another star-making turn from John "Napolean Dynamite" Heder. The movie should clear $50M before it drops out the charts and will continue to perform well on DVD.

A huge disappointment at 4 for Disney. After the success of Chicken Little and the continued success of CGI animal movies this should have been a shoe-in for big box office and the number one spot. Analysts blame the lack of box office on it being released so close to Ice Age 2 (a number of large toy companies declined the toy-rights for the movie, including Toys R Us whose New York store even features in the film). Be aware that this is certainly not the end of the cgi movie with a number already lined up for release this year, with more still in production.

Take The Lead drops two spots, losing 44% of its box office from last weekend in the process. The movie will finish its run with about $35M. The Inside Man continues to perform well in its 4th weekend and is in production profit by over $30M. Easily Spike Lee's most successful movie yet possibly the furthest from his heart.

Adding over 700 screens to its run, Thankyou For Smoking adds another $4.5M to its total. The movie is on the least amount of screens of any movie in the top ten but had one of the strongest screen/takings averages of any movie in the top ten.

Two older movies round out the top ten, Failure to Launch & V For Vendetta. Failure, which cost $4M less to produce than V has performed the best of the two movies. You can imagine that Warner Bros. figured it would be the other way round, especially given V's strong word of mouth. That's box office for you.