Good reviews paid off for Saw II as it easily eclipsed the original to hack it's way to the weekend's number one spot with a whopping $30 million take. That makes it the fifth biggest October opening in history, behind movies like Scary Movie 3 and Shark Tale. Ok, that's not exactly good company, but at least the weeks and weeks of under $20 million number ones is over. Let's hope it continues in the next few weeks as we get past Halloween and into the Holiday season. My fear here is that this may just be an aberration. The right movie for the right time of year. People are in the scary movie mood.
On the flipside of Saw II's success is The Legend of Zorro, the movie most had picked to be the weekend's number one winner. But the sequel to the popular 1998 movie Mask of Zorro was about five years too late. They should have made it sooner. Also, they should have gone PG-13. They didn't, and the Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta Jones movie paid the price. It achieved a modest $16 million three-day total, leaving it in Saw II's dust at the number two spot.
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The weekend's other two new films, Prime and The Weather Man fell in line behind their more heavily hyped competitors. 'Prime' came in at number three with terrible reviews and a limp $6.3 million total. The Weather Man fared considerably better with the press, but Paramount couldn't get audiences interested in a melancholy, downbeat comedy, even with Nicolas Cage in it. Weather Man failed to break into the top five, and placed sixth. It's a shame frankly. It's a unique and interesting film, one which people ought to take the time to see. Maybe the forecast for Weather Man isn't all grim. Initial word of mouth on the film is solid, and that could be enough to get adult audiences interested over the next few weeks.
Last week's films are already falling out of the public consciousness. Actually, falling probably isn't the right word. Let's go with plummeting. Both Doom and Stay set new standards in failure this weekend. Doom freefell from the number one spot all the way down to number seven, putting it number nineteen on the all time biggest second weekend drops list. Stay trumped it though, by recording the tenth biggest second week explosive decompression, putting both movies in the elite company of cringe-worthy flops like Gigli and From Justin to Kelly.
