| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross | Total Gross | Weeks in Release |
| 1 | Happy Feet |
$42,320,000 | $42,320,000 | 1 |
| 2 | Casino Royal | $40,600,000 | $40,600,000 | 1 |
| 3 | Borat | $14,350,000 | $90,504,000 | 3 |
| 4 | Santa Clause 3 | $8,218,000 | $51,620,000 | 3 |
| 5 | Flushed Away | $6,812,000 | $48,803,000 | 3 |
| 6 | Stranger Than Fiction | $6,600,000 | $22,900,000 | 2 |
| 7 | Babel | $2,902,000 | $12,013,000 | 4 |
| 8 | Saw III | $2,800,000 | $74,852,000 | 4 |
| 9 | The Departed | $2,605,000 | $113,861,000 | 7 |
| 10 | 8 Films to Die For |
$2,482,000 | $2,482,000 | 1 |
The numbers you see here may well be different tomorrow – some box office watchers are calling Casino Royale and Happy Feet essentially a tie. On Monday more concrete dollar amounts should show up and we’ll have a better idea of whether Bond or the penguins won the weekend.
Either way it was a strong weekend at the movies, and a strong weekend for Mr. Daniel Craig, finally hushing any concerns about his ability to step into 007’s tux. Not only was Casino Royale one of the best Bond movies, it’s earning up there with the rest, making the decision to reboot and scale back seem like a wise one. Meanwhile Happy Feet shows that there is no such thing as too many CGI movies with talking animals in any given year (unless you’re Flushed Away, a very fine film that is taking a serious loss at the box office for reasons I can’t quite comprehend – and which might be putting Aardman’s deal at Dreamworks in serious trouble).
Borat continues raking in the money, further emboldening the pussies who want to sue the producers for being tricksy. These jerks just keep coming out of the woodwork, and they’re making themselves look much worse with their suits than the movie ever did.
The only other really notable thing this week is the 8 Films to Die For ‘festival’ doing pretty bang up business by pretending that a bunch of shitty horror films were too graphic or scary for theaters when the truth is that no one wanted to lose money on them. This system seems to be working well for After Dark, though, so look forward to more ‘festivals’ like this in the future. Maybe for Halloween next year, even.