The Film The Weekend Da Per Total
1 Burn After Reading $19,404,000 $7,319 $19,404,000
2 Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys $18,020,000 $8,705 $18,020,000
3 Righteous Kill $16,500,000 $5,234 $16,500,000
4 The Women $10,088,000 $3,405 $10,088,000
5 The House Bunny $4,300,000 (-22.0%) $1,556 $42,154,000
6 Tropic Thunder $4,180,000 (-42.2%) $1,428 $102,971,000
7 The Dark Knight $4,015,000 (-27.2%) $1,832 $517,680,000
8 Bangkok Dangerous $2,400,000 (-69.2%) $904 $12,531,000
9  Traitor  $2,132,000 (-50.1%) $1,058 $20,735,000
10 Death Race $2,017,000 (-45.6%) $1,004 $33,193,000

  
This just in: After months of discussion, it turns out that twelve is the correct answer. Sorry, Vladimir Putin, try again next year.

What world do we live in? Obviously that Collider thing (not a plug for Frosty’s site, by the by) started running this week, so maybe there’s something wrong with the space-time continuum. That would help explain why a Coen brothers movie is number one at the box office. I mean, for serious, did America just grow taste? With the star power, and the Coens coming off an Oscar win, it’s likely that people got sucked in to their orbit. I don’t care how or why, I’m just happy that it happened. Next week also has four new movies, at least two of which will bomb, but that’ll be enough to suck the air out of most of these pictures. Including, likely, Burn After Reading. But who cares, the Coens are on top this week, and a “fuck yeah” is about right. This is one of those instances where I’m all too happy to admit I was wrong and underestimated the American public.

Second place went to Tyler Perry’s latest. There’s no Medea, and Alfre Woodard and Kathy Bates aren’t exactly draws. So this will likely do the business that March’s Meet the Browns did, which is around $40. Lionsgate is happy to make that money, and have no complaints. Perry’s a smart businessman, he makes these films cheap enough so it’ll take another ten or more films until they’re not profitable, and at the rate of two a year, by the time they’ve run their course, well – shit – he’s already hugely, hugely successful. Something like a phenomenon. Tell your body to come along. His own Cottage Cheese industry. And then after that came a picture starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Righteous. Not a horrible opening for the picture, but it’ll likely top out around $35-40, which means it will have to do well internationally, and on DVD to make that cheddar back. There’s something so disappointing about seeing two of cinema’s greatest actors working together in something so forgettable, and cinema may be worse off for it. Righteous.

The Women gained some traction when Sex and the City showed that yes, women do go to the movies, and can make a film a hit. And so Warner Brothers at least decided that the Picturehouse picture deserved an honorable death. So that ten million opening isn’t anything to sneeze at. Wait, you sneezed at it? Well, there you go. It may not take as much of a hit next weekend, and could be in for a long play if word of mouth is good. It likely isn’t, and Warners is doing well enough this year with the whole Batman crossing half a billion domestically, that they can and will let it go. And what the filmmakers did to the original film, I would like to do to Zooey Deschanel. Shalom.

So The House Bunny held better than Tropic Thunder. TT crossed into the one hundred zone, but The House Bunny looks to likely double its cost theatrically.  On a per screen level, The Dark Knight is doing better than either. People are still watching the bat, and even in the bottom half of the top ten, it should hang out for a while, while pictures like Bangkok Dangerous will open and then fall 69%. That’s not change we can believe in, my friends. That’s disastrous. Then again, it got to #1 last week, so they can sell that when the DVD hits, even if it won’t get to $20 million. Traitor and Death Race are just hanging out. There are four films next weekend, and theaters are getting their early fall colonic. Time to flush and start over. And you thought it was a Schwinn.