U.S Box Office Report - 28th - 30th October 2005

1. Saw II - $30.5M $30.5M
2. The Legend of Zorro - $16.5M $16.5M
3. Prime - $6.4M $6.4M
4. Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story - $6.3M $17.5M
5. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - $4.4M $49.8M
6. The Weather Man - $4.22M $4.22M
7. Doom - $4.1M $22.9M
8. North Country - $3.65M $12.2M
9. The Fog - $3.3M $25.5M
10. Flightplan - $2.6M $81.2M

Holy Crap! Check out that opening weekend for Saw II. Biggest opening weekend for October? Nope, that honour goes to Scary Movie 3. The scary thing is that the $30M opening weekend for Saw II is the biggest weekend take since July's Charlie & Choc Factory! Early word of mouth wasn't great but obviously the public were looking for a Halloween movie and they found it. But no $30M weekends since July is a bit worrying when some years we've had two or three in one weekend.

In at two and taking almost half less than Saw II, was another sequel, Legend of Zorro. The movie seems to have had a somewhat stifled release and you can well imagine that Jones and Banderas were possibly contracted to the sequel. An annoying kid can't have helped matters either (when will Hollywood learn?)

The Uma Thurman/Meryl Streep comedy Prime opens at 3 with a disappointing take. Possibly counter-programming by the studios, and like the recent In Her Shoes, only modestly successful.

Strong word of mouth saw Dreamer lose just 32% of its business from last week. Likewise, the steam train that is W&G continues to take a good amount of money in its now fourth week.

Big casualty this week was the Nic Cage movie The Weather Man. Delayed from way back in April (according to studio, to give it an Oscar (!) shot), this is the 2nd Nic Cage film in as many months to under-perform. Marketing the movie didn't help, was it a comedy? A drama? You just couldn't really tell.

Last weeks no.1, Doom, had a massive 73% drop off. That's bound to disappoint as its opening wasn't exactly the strongest it could have been. Expect it to drop further next week and see an early DVD release. Only Uwe Boll can save us with his gaming adaptations.

The rest of the chart is made up by another new entry from last week that underperformed, North Country, Horror-lite The Fog and the Jodie Foster starrer Flightplan, which also looks to finally leave the top ten next week, with a total of around $82M.

Goodnight and Good Luck continues to perform very well, taking another $2M from just 272 screens. Both Shopgirl and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang added screens and saw their totals rise accordingly.