U.S Box Office Report - 14th - 16th September 2007

1. The Brave One - $14M - $14M
2. 3:10 to Yuma - $9.1M - $28.5M
3. Mr. Woodcock - $9.1M - $9.1M
4. Dragon Wars -  $5.3M - $5.3M
5. Superbad - $5.2M - $111.3M
6. Halloween - $5M - $51.2M
7. The Bourne Ultimatum -  $4.1M - $216.1M
8. Balls of Fury -  $3.3M - $28.8M
9. Rush Hour 3 -  $3.3M - $133.1M
10. Mr. Bean's Holiday - $2.6M - $28,4M

The Jodie Foster thriller 'The Brave One' opens in the top spot with an average $14M. Foster has always been a bankable star, with recent success with The Panic Room, Flightplan and her co-starring role in The Inside Man but reviews for the Brave One have been disappointing and on any other other week the film might not have even reached the relatively low $14M. Like we've seen with some recent hits, only a lack of new releases will keep this in the charts - where it release in June, the film would have been a memory in a fortnights time.

The 3:10 to Yuma manages a drop of just 35% in its second weekend of release. Strong word of mouth is helping this one perform well and it should see $50M when all the dust has finally settled, but it does make one wonder how much better it would have done had it kept its original autumn release instead of being bought forward to the start of September - coinciding with the start of the football season and, to a lesser degrees, the returning of kids/students to school, when ticket numbers usually face a significant drop.

Another Bill Bob Thornton comedy drops into third place. It was around this time last year that Thornton was seen in School For Scoundrels, which ended up with a poor $17M when receipts where counted. This one hasn't faired much better, with an opening weekend total just about Scoundrels. Thornton has struggled in the last few years - The Astronaut Farmer, Bad News Bears, The Ice Harvest and the aforementioned School for Scoundrels all failed to find much of a market. In fact, Thornton hasn't had much of a hit since 2004 Friday Night Lights and 2003 Bad Santa.

Our final new release is the Korean box office hit Dragon Wars. Released at just 2000 locations, with little in the way of advertising (it's distributor is a new company as well), the film did well to see $5M. It won't hang around for long but this minor release serves as a big advert for its inevitable cult status on DVD. The film has taken $60M on the worldwide market.

Superbad crosses the $110M mark this weekend, and is off just 31% from this time last week. It may get a further, slight boost next weekend with the DVD release of Knocked Up, a film which Superbad shares plenty in common. This tiny movie, made for just $20M, has yet to see release in the foreign market and with such strong word of mouth coming from its US release, it's not impossible that the film could see another $100M in foreign ticket sales.

Halloween crosses the $50M this weekend, something it probably would have struggled to do had it had to face off against some bigger movies. It's a minor hit for MGM/Weinsteins and while sequels have apparently been ruled out, it wouldn't be too much of a shock to see at least one straight to DVD follow up within the year.

The Bourne Ultimatum is now just $3M shy of doubling its production budget. A fantastic success both critically and financially, the film currently sits on $317M when factoring in international ticket sales. Meanwhile Balls of Fury sits just below $30M and will probably end up with around $35-37M by the end of its theatrical run. Only its low budget can be of any consolation to Rogue Pictures.

Rush Hour 3 may well be seeing its last weekend in the charts and while it total sales close in on $200M, it's still not yet surpassed the box office total of the first movie, which saw release over ten years ago. Rounding out the top ten is Mr Bean's Holiday which edges close to $30M. Out of the top ten, only The Bourne Ultimatum has been more successful in terms of total global sales than the Rowan Atkinson starrer.

A number of films opened to varying success in limited release - Musical 'Across The Universe' took $685K from 23 locations, David Cronenberg's Eastern Promise managed $552K from 15 locations (along with winning the audience award at the Toronto Film Festival over the weekend) and In The Valley of Elah, Paul Haggis' follow up to Crash, took $138K from 9 locations.