ADAM SANDLER - SANDLER CLICKS AGAIN WITH AUDIENCES

Adam Sandler, a regular one-man Pixar studio whose name on the marquee appears likely to guarantee a movie's success regardless of what the critics say about it, chalked up another big opening over the weekend. Click, Sandler's fifth film to open with $40 million or more, took over the top spot at the box office with $40.01 million, as Disney/Pixar's Cars dropped a moderate 31 percent to second place with $23.3 million. Paramount's Nacho Libre, by comparison, had a 55-percent fall, winding up in third place with $12.7 million. Universal's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift performed better than expected on Sunday, taking in $9.8 million to take fourth place in the weekend standings. It dropped 59 percent from a week earlier. The most surprising performer was Rogue Picture's Waist Deep, which debuted on only 1,004 theaters with $9.4 million. Its $9,367 per-theater average was exceeded only by Click, which averaged $10,673 per theater. Overall, the box office was up 10 percent over the comparable week last year, with admissions up 6 percent.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Exhibitor Relations (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. Click, Sony, $40,011,365, (New); 2. Cars, Disney, $23,285,367, 3 Wks. ($156,664,916); 3. Nacho Libre, Paramount, $12,699,864, 2 Wks. ($53,221,306); 4. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Universal, $9,801,835, 2 Wks. ($43,144,240); 5. Waist Deep, Rogue Pictures/Focus Features, $9,404,180, (New); 6. The Lake House, Warner Bros., $8,832,259, 2 Wks. ($29,774,472); 7. The Break-Up, Universal, $6,596,625, 4 Wks. ($104,235,420); 8. Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, 20th Century Fox, $5,209,818, 2 Wks. ($16,483,101); 9. X-Men: The Last Stand, 20th Century Fox, $4,841,950, 5 Wks. ($224,506,162); 10. The Da Vinci Code, Sony, $4,050,844, 6 Wks. ($205,589,742).

27/06/2006