| Product | Three Days | Per Screen | Lifetime | |
| 1 | Lakeview Terrace | $15,600,000 | $6,331 | $15,600,000 |
| 2 | Burn After Reading | $11,295,000 (-41.0%) | $4,251 | $36,401,000 |
| 3 | My Best Friend’s Girl | $8,300,000 | $3,187 | $8,300,000 |
| 4 | Igor | $8,010,000 | $3,425 | $8,010,000 |
| 5 | Righteous Kill | $7,700,000 (-52.7%) | $2,443 | $28,810,000 |
| 6 | Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys | $7,500,000 (-56.8%) | $3,623 | $28,356,000 |
| 7 | The Women | $5,306,000 (-47.5%) | $1,772 | $19,209,000 |
| 8 | Ghost Town | $5,171,000 | $3,436 | $5,171,000 |
| 9 | The Dark Knight | $2,950,000 (-28.5%) | $1,549 | $521,925,000 |
| 10 | The House Bunny | $2,800,000 (-32.6%) | $1,047 | $45,724,000 |
This just in: A Spanish Egg-White Omelet for table three. With a side of applesauce. And it’s only getting colder, so hustle.
Well, I said $15.5 for Lakeview Terrace. Since I’m hardly ever that on the nose, that crow you hear is me. Ka-kaw, bitches. This is a fairly successful opening for a picture that supposedly cost $20 Million, even though the marketing budget was likely of the same amount. With Fall rules in effect (which is not cricket), if the film didn’t totally shit the bed in terms of word of mouth, I could see it getting to over $50, so get ready for the unrated edition DVD. Exceeding expectations was Burn After Reading, which in its second weekend held strong, and only dropped a little over 40%. Considering that the acerbic wit of the Joel and Ethan (happy birthday, by the by) has never been that fiscally remunerative when it wasn’t attached to a zeitgeist (that is to say Fargo and No Country did well, and were very funny movies, but that’s not why they became successful), you tend to have less than stellar grosses (Hudsucker and Lebowski found their audience on home video). Since Burn is some kind of masterpiece, it’s good to see audiences responding.
On the less than favorable side, Dane Cook’s film career will also appear with that previously essayed Egg-White Omelet. Or, that is to say, if the person at table three forgoes the Scone, then it’s toast. Like Dane’s career. See how I brought the thing you thought had no relation to anything in? I set it up, like the Clock Tower and shit. Except, you know, not very good at all. All this breakfast talk is making me hungry. Wait, okay, so speaking of flops (like a pancake being flipped over unsuccessfully), there’s also Igor, which was an off-season kids film hoping that parents would have nothing better to do than dump their kids at it. Maybe it does better on DVD. While Ghost Town died (un-dead death?). That said, as bad as the number is, Paramount really gave up the (yeah sorry about this) ghost on this one long before release. I’ve heard that the film isn’t terrible, but Sometimes September is all about dumps. My guess is that they tried to entice Gervais into a three picture deal, or some sort of production offer by giving him this role (and/or Koepp may have needed some pay-off for working on Indy IV… but I’m just spit-balling here), and when Gervais turned them down to go Warner for his next, this modest introductory picture got the fuzz end of the lollipop. Got chopped into chorizo.
Speaking of breakfast foods, Righteous Kill held better than Tyler Perry’s latest, which may be because the target audience for Righteous is not necessarily an opening weekend crowd. It would be funny for the film to do better than Perry’s, but then again, what does it say that a Pyrrhic victory for two of cinemas greats over Tyler Perry feels like a win? That’s not all the minerals and vitamins we can believe in. A little lower on the spectrum of jazz is The Women, which didn’t die, but isn’t going to make anyone happy. Not happy like Eggs Benedict can. Or an Original Pancake House Ham and Cheese omelet with a side of sour cream. That, that’s happiness. By the way, the breakfast of the opening sentence would be the ham on display in Kill. Maybe there’s a moon over it.
The Dark Knight might finish its run (this run) with $530, but with three new pictures opening wide next week this could be its last hurrah in the top ten. Then again, it could also hold stronger than The Women, and Ghost Town. And possibly the Perry. Ten weeks in the top ten is as good a run as any picture gets these days. And The House Bunny seemed perched to cross fifty by the time is all said and done.