Halloween may be a month away, but some animated movie monsters managed to sneak out early, ring the box office doorbell and collect an estimated $43 million worth of treats.
Hotel Transylvania’s weekend take wasn’t just enough to buy about 200 million fun-size Butterfinger bars (give or take); it gave Dracula et al a box-office victory and set a record in the process (the most lucrative September opening ever). Now, if that’s not reason enough to slap on a satin-lined cape and grow a set of long, pearly fangs, I don’t know what is.
Transylvania’s success drained any hope that Looper, an R-rated brain-scrambler, had of claiming the top prize for itself. Neither the presence of Bruce Willis nor Joseph Gordon-Levitt (playing the very same guy) in this sci-fi thriller could blunt the sharp bite of Sony’s animated monster romp, which more than doubled Looper’s $21 million take—a haul which, incidentally, would’ve been enough to win or nearly win the box office crown the last four weeks.
End of Watch, Trouble With the Curve and House at the End of the Street reprised their three-way box-office battle royale of last week—only just a little farther down the list. End of Watch (which won last week, according to final figures) finished third with $8 million, while Clint Eastwood’s Curve slid into fourth with $7.5 million. And it might be the end of the line for End of the Street, as far as the box office’s Top 5 goes: It held onto fifth with around $7.2 mil.
Pitch Perfect, another newcomer, captured sixth place with $5.2 million, but here’s the interesting thing: The comedy musical was only released in 335 theaters—about a tenth of Hotel Transylvania’s screen count and nearly 2,200 fewer than another newcomer, Won’t Back Down. But while Pitch Perfect trilled its way to about $15,500 per screen, Won’t Back Down could only muster a very dowdy $1,100 per. Even someone as bad at math as I am understands that’s probably why Won’t Back Down barely finished in the Top 10 with $2.7 million.
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