‘Lakeview Terrace’ Tops Disappointing Weekend at the Box Office

This weekend Samuel L. Jackson scored a number one opening with the interracial cop thriller, Lakeview Terrace, while helping Sony score their fifth number one of the year. The weekend managed to match year ago levels, but performance was underwhelming considering the line-up of new films hitting cinemas.

Lakeview Terrace debuted with a decent $15.6M according to weekend estimates. Despite stiff competition, the $20M production played in 2,464 theaters and averaged a not-too-shabby $6,331 per site. For star Samuel L. Jackson, it was a rare opportunity to open a film alone since the movie doesn’t feature any other stars and the advertisements relied heavily on Jackson.

Last weekend’s number one film, Burn After Reading, held up fairly well and managed to land at number two. The dark comedy brought in an estimated $11.3M which was down a reasonable 41% from last weekend. The film enjoyed a smaller decline that the Coen Brothers usually experience, and, after ten days, the cumulative total stands at $36.4M. Unfortunately, it looks to finish with somewhere around $65M which will be a huge disappointment considering the major starpower in the film.

Dane Cook failed to give audiences a reason to show up for My Best Friend’s Girl (or maybe it was that creepy poster that Cook dumped on a while back). The film only managed to bring in $8.3M from 2,604 theaters for a weak $3,187 average. Believe it or not, that was actually down 39% from the $13.7M opening of Cook’s Good Luck Chuck last year and down 27% from the $11.4M of his Employee of the Month in 2006.

Playing in only 2,339 locations, Igor managed to reach respectable levels and landed in fourth place. The MGM animated film brought in an estimated $8M and averaged $3,425. Of course, this gross was only respectable because no one expected much of anything out of this movie after the studio basically abandoned any form of advertising campaign for it.

Rounding out the top ten:

• 5. Righteous Kill - $7.7M - down 53% - $28.8M cume
• 6. The Family That Preys - $7.5M - down 57% - $28.4M cume
• 7. The Women - $5.3M - down 48% - $19.2M cume
• 8. Ghost Town - $5.2M - opening - $5.2M cume
• 9. The Dark Knight - $3.0M - down 29% - $521.9M cume
• 10. The House Bunny - $2.8M - down 33% - $45.7M cume

No one was sure how well Ghost Town would do this weekend when it opened. The previews and trailers looked funny, but Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni are barely stars. As it turns out, American audiences still aren’t sure about Ricky Gervais either. Look for this one on DVD.

Also opening in limited release were The Duchess and Appaloosa. The Duchess opened in seven theaters and grossed $203,000 for an impressive $28,932 average. The film will expand into the top 20 markets this weekend. Appaloosa opened in fourteen theaters and grossed $258,000 for a strong $18,429 average. It will open nationwide on October 3.

The top ten films grossed $74.6M which was down just about 1% from last year when Resident Evil: Extinction opened at number one with $23.7M and down about 3% from 2006 when Jackass: Number Two opened at number one with $29M (Really? It did that much? Wow.).

Weekend Box Office (September 19-21, 2008)

The upcoming weekend should see one of the bigger hits of the Fall open. Shia LaBeouf will be back in theaters and out to prove his star-status as Eagle Eye finally hits the big screen. Richard Gere and Diane Lane are reunited in Nights in Rodanthe. And Spike Lee debuts his Oscar hopeful, Miracle at St. Anna.