U.S Box Office Report - 30th Sept - 2nd Oct 2005

1. Flightplan - $15M - $46.1M
2. Serenity - $10.1M - $10.1M
3. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride - $9.7M - $32.9M
4. A History of Violence - $8.2M - $8.9M
5.Into the Blue - $7M - $7M
6. Just Like Heaven - $6.1M - $38.3M
7. The Exorcism of Emily Rose - $4.4M - $68.5M
8. Roll Bounce - $4M - $12.6M
9. The Greatest Game Ever Played - $3.7M - $3.7M
10. The 40-Year-Old Virgin - $3.1M - $101.3M

Right then. Serenity didn't do as well as predictions (and reviews) thought it would, scoring at the low end of the estimates. Opening on quite a few screens less than normal (just over 2000 screens) and facing the fact that it was launched from a TV show that it had to on the one hand, pander to fans, but on the other hand, try and attract a new audience.

Strong word of mouth will hopefully see it stay in the top five next week but it's getting busy out there again. The studio though, will be disappointed in that a new entry didn't take the top spot from a week old film that wasn't half as well reviewed. It only cost $40M, which is pretty damn cheap for a sci-fi movie. Again, bear in mind that the movie was on almost 1500 less screens than Corpse & Flightplan.

Speaking of Flightplan, it lost just 38% of its business from last week. Burton's Corpse Bride continued to do good business, dropping 49% from last week.

A History of Violence jumped up the chart as it opened wide on many more screens and will be Cronenberg's biggest opening for movie. There's been a lot of hype and the good reviews have certainly gone a long way, as did having Viggo Mortensen in the lead role. The film had the best screen to takings ratio of any movie in the top ten.

Into the Blue opened with $7M which given the fact that the movie was pretty much dumped into the end of summer, wasn't too bad a total, but still not great. Dumb fun is how its being billed. Which is how Stealth was billed.....

Just Like Heaven continues to drop down the chart, as does Exorcism of Emily Rose, but only one of them is already well into profit (Rose). Heaven is being seen as a major disappointment.

Roll Bounce drops more spaces and we'll see it vanish next week. A skating-disco boogie movie was never really going to find a niche at the box office. Not in this decade anyway. The only other new entry, Greatest Game Ever Played, based on the true story of a rookie golfer who takes on the world champion, did ok business on just 1000 screens.

Finally, The 40 Year Old Virgin sees its last week in top ten for sure. Having made a tidy profit, it'll join Wedding Crashers as one of the biggest comedies of 2005.

In limited release, the biopic Capote had a strong screen to takings average, as did the Neil Gaiman fantasy pic, Mirrormask.