It was a good weekend to be a Gekko, but not so hot for owls and old women. As the sleepy month of October approaches audiences continue to steer clear of theaters, but enough showed up this weekend to make one movie a winner.
I'm not a big fan of sequels, or of Oliver Stone movies for that matter, so there was very little to not cringe about when Stone announced a sequel to 1987's Wall Street. Of course, I can't blame him. If I made a cautionary tale film about the danger of greed only to watch the entire American financial system completely ignore it while causing a handful of recessions, I'd want to try again too.
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which brought back Michael Douglas as the iconic Gordon Gekko, took an easy first place with just $19 million. While not an overly impressive sum, it's a solid number for this slow time of the year and easily double what Wall Street made its first weekend out, even with adjustment for inflation.
A flock of highly detailed, 3D, computer generated owls didn't fare nearly so well. In second place with only $16 million, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole looks to fall far short of turning a profit. While budget numbers haven't been released yet, movies like this rarely get cranked out for less than $100 million.
Betty White's career continues to enjoy a fourth wind (or is this the fifth...it's hard to remember), though her latest movie You Again didn't catch much of that wind in its sales. With only $8 million it fell short of last week's #1 The Town and #2 Easy A for a distant fifth place.
For the full weekend top ten numbers check out the chart below.
