Weekend Receipts: Contagion Fever -- Catch It!

Hark, a brand new film hath unseated The Assistance for that #1 crown! All it required was Steven Soderbergh’s hypochondria-inducing Contagion, an image which will surely also boost worldwide sales of Purell throughout flu season. Even though there’s no love lost in seeing a week ago’s Shark Evening three dimensional and Apollo 18 drop precipitously lower within the ranks, the heartstrings pull for Warrior, a carefully behaved MMA film that only got a small fraction of the theater count of their rivals, and carried out accordingly. But! A minimum of it worked out much better than Bucky Larson… 1. Contagion Gross: $23,135,000 ($23,135,000) Screens: 3,222 (PSA: $7,180) Days: 1 Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion drawn on into an elemental fascination one of the American public: Paranoia. (As well as on the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, believe it or not.) What it really offered audiences, just like The Assistance, appears to indicate a vital change within the movie schedule — summer time has ended, also it’s time for additional serious, grown-up fare in the box office. It remains to appear when the pandemic thriller’s reign could keep distributing within the coming days, but because of the competition it’s got a high probability of holding #1 until Moneyball and Abduction go into the charts. 2. The Assistance Gross: Eight Dollars,691,000 ($137,093,000) Screens: 2,935 (PSA: Two Dollars,961) Days: 5 (change: - 40.five percent) It required a cast of the-listers along with a global pandemic to unseat Tate Taylor’s The Assistance after its unpredicted reign at #1, but nonetheless: at $137M and counting, it’s the sleeper hit of the season. Expect the domestic drama to help keep hanging out the very best 10 for some time. 3. Warrior Gross: Five Dollars,607,000 (new) Screens: 1,869 (PSA: Three Dollars,000) Days: 1 It’s unfortunate Lionsgate didn’t open their Tom Sturdy-Joel Edgerton MMA drama in not only 1,869 theaters, since this is a movie much more potent than its logline indicates. Though their stars are increasing, leads Sturdy and Edgerton continue to be unknown to a lot of and also at $5.6M, the Gavin O’Connor-directed sports drama fell shorter than expected in the box office. That could make Warrior’s lengthy-shot honours season hopes even longer, but doesn’t everybody prefer to root for that underdog? 4. Your Debt Gross: $ 4,905,000 ($21,993,000) Screens: 1,874 (PSA: Two Dollars,617) Days: 2 (change: - 50.five percent) Despite star Helen Mirren or more-and-comers Mike Worthington and Jessica Chastain about the marquee, John Madden’s Mossad action-thriller experienced from middling reviews as well as less passionate person to person, despite getting its moments. This doesn’t bode well for Texas Killing Fields, the October pic that reunites Worthington and Chastain… 5. Colombiana Gross: $4,000,000 ($29,779,000) Screens: 2,354 (PSA: $1,699) Days: 3 (change: -46.4%) Zoe Saldana’s action heroine turn is waiting on hold relatively well, getting made it much better than, say, Shark Evening three dimensional or Apollo 18. Credit producer/co-author Luc Besson for consistently delivering the type of muscular, sexy action that audiences love — as well as for giving Avatar star Saldana an properly slinky, tough leading role. May she hang on within the top ten, guns blazing, as Hay Dogs, Drive, Abduction, and Killer Elite blast their distance to the genre pool within the coming days. — 13. Laugh inside my Discomfort Gross: $2,000,000 (new) Screens: 97 (PSA: $20,619) Days: 1 The actual success story from the weekend? Comedian Kevin Hart’s stand-up comedy special Laugh inside my Discomfort, which gained an amazing $20K per-screen average on just 97 screens within an exclusive run via AMC Theaters and built person to person largely through social networking. Meanwhile… 15. Bucky Larson: Born to become a Star Gross: $1,450,000 (new) Screens: 1,500 (PSA: $967) Days: 1 Nick Swardson’s star turn like a buck-toothed aspirant porn ingnue, shockingly, didn't even crack the very best 10. Maybe everybody required Movieline guest rater Joanna Angel’s advice and made the decision to hold back for Netflix. [Amounts via Box Office Guru]