DREAMWORKS - MOVIEGOER TO DREAMWORKS: I KID YOU NOT

Final figures confirmed Monday that Paramount/DreamWorks' The Heartbreak Kid, which had been expected to win the box-office race hands-down, was thrown for a loss by the football-themed family movie The Game Plan. Heartbreak opened in second place with $14 million, while the second week of Game Plan remained in first with $16.6 million. The Jamie Foxx-starring thriller The Kingdom slipped to second place with $9.7 million. Two other new films tanked in their debuts. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising opened in fifth place at $3.7 million, ahead of the dance flick Feel the Noise, which opened in eighth place with $3.1 million. Surprisingly Lionsgate's 3:10 to Yuma had the smallest drop of any film in wide release -- just 28 percent -- as it took in an additional $3.2 million in its fifth week and landed in seventh place. It has now earned $48.7 million, the highest gross for any film thus far in the fall season. In reporting on the Yuma results, Baltimore Sun movie writer Michael Sragow commented that they prove "that even in a lowest-common-denominator marketplace, talent, sometimes, will win out."

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Media by Numbers (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. The Game Plan, Disney, $16,609,377, 2 Wks. ($43,158,823); 2. The Heartbreak Kid, Paramount, $14,022,105, (New); 3. The Kingdom, Universal, $9,722,940, 2 Wks. ($31,746,270); 4. Resident Evil: Extinction, Sony, $4,521,301, 3 Wks. ($43,695,477); 5. The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising, 20th Century Fox, $3,745,315, (New); 6. Good Luck Chuck, Lions Gate, $3,657,516, 3 Wks. ($29,255,442); 7. 3:10 to Yuma, Lions Gate, $3,215,469, 5 Wks. ($48,728,753); 8. Feel the Noise, Sony, $3,187,153, (New); 9. Mr. Woodcock, New Line, $2,331,445, 4 Wks. ($22,613,590); 10. The Brave One, Warner Bros., $2,321,359, 4 Wks. ($34,380,387).

09/10/2007