National Treasure: Book Of Secrets walked away the number one movie this weekend, conquering not only the competition but it's predecessor as well. The first National Treasure, which was released in November 2004 opened to the tune of $35 million. The sequel bagged over $45 million. With news like that you can expect Buena Vista to have a check ready for the Wibberley's to start work on a script for a third film. It's likely to be a good size check. Too bad the Wibberley's will have to wait for the writer's strike to end before they can cash it.
Last week's top dogs I Am Legend and Alvin and the Chipmunks only dropped one notch under the weight of National Treasure's success. The other four new films were left scrabbling for the scraps, ending up in very unexpeted places on the chart. Charlie Wilson's War was one big surprise, pulling in $9.6 million. Perhaps I underestimated the power of Tom Hanks (or maybe it was the long absent Julia Roberts), but this was one film that wasn't expected to get much financial attention. Close behind it, in fifth place, was Sweeney Todd with $9.3 million. Apparently America was up for a little bit of Johnny Depp's throat-slitting, song-singing escapades as they entered the Christmas holiday.
P.S. I Love You fell in at the sixth place spot with $6.5 million, leaving Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story eating everyone else's dust. With only $4.1 million, this marks the lowest opening weekend for a movie written by Judd Apatow, excepting the little known, less seen 1996 debacle Celtic Pride. Despite being critically acclaimed AND having the appearance of being the sort of stupid comedy America usually laps up like a dog to anti-freeze, Dewey Cox is all set to die fast and quiet.
As predicted Juno snuck its way into the number ten spot, taking in $3.4 million and nearly doubling the money it made over the last two weekends in small release. With three Golden Globe nominations, there's a good chance the movie will see some action at Oscar nom time, leading to perhaps a little more attention in theaters. In the meantime, however, its moment in the spotlight may have come and gone. It expands to nearly a thousand screens on Christmas Day, but that's a short amount of time for word of mouth to spread and get the movie the attention it needs to draw the bigger box office bucks.
