Newcomers claimed the top three spots at the U.S. boxoffice over the weekend as director Joel Schumacher’s and Twentieth Century Fox’s thriller, Phone Booth, called in a $15 million victory. Warner Bros.’ What a Girl Wants came in second with an estimated $12 million, followed by New Line’s Vin Diesel vehicle, A Man Apart, with around $11.1 million. Meanwhile, despite an aggressive second week marketing push, Paramount’s big-budget effects extravaganza The Core slipped from No. 3 to No. 6, adding an estimated $6.3 to its cume.
In its first weekend, the action-packed, animated feature Cowboy Bebop: The Movie managed $247,000 in just 19 theaters. Anime aficionados and fans of the Cartoon Network series sought the film out to the tune of a whopping $13,000 per-theater average. By comparison, Phone Booth averaged about $6,000 per theater.
Disney’s Piglet’s Big Movie brought in around $3 million for a No. 10 finish. The big-screen adventure for the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood has pulled in nearly $17 million in three weeks of release.
Disney’s release of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away added a few more theaters to its limited count and brought in just over $1 million during the weekend. The flick’s U.S. cume of nearly $9 million is chump change compared to the $234 million it has grossed in Japan, where it broke box office records.
