U.S Box Office Report - 5th - 7th August 2005

1. Dukes of Hazzard - $30.7M - $30.7M
2. The Wedding Crashers - $16M - $144M
3. Charlie & The Choc Factory - $10M - $169M
4. Sky High $9M - $32M
5. Must Love Dogs $7M - $26M
6. March of the Penguins - $7M - $26M
7. Stealth $5.8M - $24M
8. Fantastic Four $4M - $143M
9. War of the Worlds - $3.5M - $224M
10. The Island $3M - $30M

No big surprise at the top of the charts. Hazzard had next to no competition for the top spot. Costing only $50M, it'll turn a nice profit over the next few weeks. Wedding Crashers added another $16M and has surely become THE sleeper hit of the summer. Expect some kind of sequel to be bandied about soon.

Charlie hung tight near the top and two of the new entries from last week continued to dig in and make a few more million. Both Sky High & Dogs will also turn a profit in the next few weeks. Sky High is getting some very strong word of mouth so that might have longer legs than Dogs.

Last weeks disaster Stealth fell to 7 with a big dip in takings, which were already lacklustre to begin with. FF4 and WotW both continue to hang in there but we'll see at least one of them drop out the top ten next week. Finally, The Island continued to flop and you can bet now that all efforts will be put into getting it on to DVD as soon as possible to pick up any straggling hype from the cinema release.

March of the Penguins added plenty more screens and saw its box office rise accordingly. After Fahrenheit 911, March is now the most successful documentary ever made.

Next week three movies open wide. The already out here thriller The Skeleton Key, The John Singleton movie, Four Brothers and the comedy sequel, Deuce Bigelow - European Gigolo.

You might see that last one finish up the best of the new entries as the first movie did some decent business. Skeleton Key wasn't too well received here so I don't think that'll do startling business in the US either. Four Brothers, about four brothers returning home to see why their mum was killed, will probably do solid if not high box office.

We're now entering the final throws of the summer box office window and you'll see a lot of movies dumped onto the schedule simply because they don't fit anywhere else.