Director Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic Novel 300 held onto the top spot at the North American box office for a second week, crossing the $100 million mark in the process. Made for a relatively modest $65 million, the CG-heavy movie has already earned approximately $127 million domestically and is topping charts overseas as it begins to roll out internationally. Stateside, mixed word-of-mouth contributed to a 56% drop in attendance from its opening frame, but that’s affordable when you have a $70 million March debut.
The week’s newcomers proved unworthy adversaries for the Spartan soldiers and the weekend road warriors in Disney’s Wild Hogs. The ensemble motorcycle comedy took in an estimated $18.8 million to stay at No. 2, while Sony’s Sandra Bullock thriller, Premonition, finished in third with a respectable $18 million (est.).
Dead Silence, the latest horror effort from the producers of Saw, was fairly quiet in its first week out of the gate. The heavily promoted chiller taps into the nearly universal fear of ventriloquist dummies but only managed a $7.7 million, fourth-place debut. Rounding out the top-five is writer/director/star Chris Rock’s I Think I Love My Wife. The dramedy from Fox Searchlight didn’t get much affection from audiences as it racked up around $5.7 million in 1,776 theaters domestically.
Next week sees the debut of TMNT, the CG-animated feature that will relaunch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. The action-adventure pic was animated by Imagi in Hong Kong and is being released by Warner Bros. and The Weinstein Co. Read about the making of the movie in the latest issue of Animation Magazine.
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