Los Angeles – News Corp.’s spy thriller “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, opened as the top film in U.S. and Canadian theaters over the weekend with $51.1 million in ticket sales.
DreamWorks Animation SKG’s animated comedy “Madagascar” dropped to second from last week’s first place spot with $17.1 million. News Corp.’s “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” remained at third with $14.9 million, box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co. said Sunday in a statement.
“Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “Revenge of the Sith” extend the success of News Corp.’s 20th Century Fox studio this year.
With $713 million in U.S. ticket sales through last weekend, News Corp. is ranked No. 1 in box office market share among owners of Hollywood studios.
“You can check your brain at the door and spend two hours with big, beautiful stars and explosions,” Gitesh Pandya of Boxofficeguru.com said of “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” in a telephone interview. “That’s worth the money at this time of year.” “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” follows a couple, played by Jolie and Pitt, who live what seems to be an ordinary suburban life. What they don’t realize is that each is an assassin working for a competing organization.
After News Corp., Sony Corp. ranks second in box office market share with $661 million in ticket sales. Walt Disney Co.
is third with $514.6 million and Time Warner Inc. is fourth with $494.3 million, according to box office tracker Nielsen EDI.
Sales for the top 12 films fell 10 percent to $138.1 million from a year earlier, Encino, California-based Exhibitor Relations said. It’s the 16th weekend in a row in which sales have fallen from last year’s comparable period.
“This is the final down weekend,” Pandya said. “I firmly believe that next weekend the numbers will be higher and we will be stronger than 2004 for the first time in a long time.” Warner Bros.’ “Batman Begins,” which opens next weekend, “will certainly save the day and get rid of the drought,” Pandya said.
“The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D,” from Disney’s Dimension Films, opened in fifth with $12.5 million. In the movie, a 10-year-old outcast boy becomes lost in his fantasy world and soon realizes his imagination might be more real than he originally thought.
Viacom Inc.’s “The Honeymooners” opened in seventh with $5.8 million. The Paramount Pictures release, adapted from the 1950s television sitcom, stars Cedric the Entertainer as a New York bus driver who hatches a get-rich-quick scheme to get himself and a friend, a sewer worker, out of Brooklyn.
‘Longest Yard’ Paramount’s “The Longest Yard,” starring Adam Sandler, fell to fourth from second with sales of $13.5 million. Sandler plays a former professional football quarterback, now in prison, who organizes fellow inmates to play against the prison guards.
“Madagascar” tells a story of four animals that escape New York’s Central Park Zoo only to be shipped to Madagascar, an island off Africa’s eastern coast.
“Revenge of the Sith” reveals how the young Jedi knight Anakin Skywalker becomes the villainous Darth Vader. Hayden Christensen plays Skywalker, and Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman and Samuel L. Jackson co-star.
The second “Star Wars” trilogy has now surpassed the first three films in ticket sales with $1.07 billion, setting a record for sales for a three-film series in North America, Pandya said.
‘Cinderella Man’ “Cinderella Man,” a production of General Electric Co.’s Universal Pictures about Depression-era boxer James Braddock, fell to sixth from fourth with $9.5 million. Russell Crowe plays Braddock, whose surprise victories in a series of fights led him to the heavyweight boxing championship in 1935. Renee Zellweger and Paul Giamatti co-star.
Time Warner’s “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” fell to eighth from fifth with $5.68 million. The Warner Bros. film follows the adventures of four young women whose friendship is interrupted by summertime travels. It’s based on the book by Ann Brashares.
Time Warner’s “Monster-in-Law,” starring Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez, fell to ninth from sixth, at $2.63 million.
“Crash,” a drama about race relations in Southern California that’s distributed by Lions Gate Entertainment, fell to 10th from eighth with sales of $1.9 million.
For the top 10, News Corp. films had the largest market share this weekend with $65.9 million, followed by Viacom with $19.3 million, Disney with $12.5 million, General Electric with $9.5 million and Time Warner with $8.31 million.
Among companies with major Hollywood studios, Sony failed to place a film in the top 10.
