Gregg Kilday of THR:
Competing against Halloween parties and contending with an unseasonal blizzard in the Northeast, DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots, distributed by Paramount, purred its way to the top spot at the North American boxoffice with an estimated $34 million. That amounted to a new Halloween weekend record, leaping over the $33.6 million that Saw III registered in 2006.
But the weekend’s two other new wide releases displayed far less derring-do. Fox’s sci-fi tale In Time, starring Justin Timberlake, debuted in third place with $12 million, while the Johnny Depp starrer, The Rum Diary, released by FilmDistrict had to settle for a sobering $5 million and a fifth place showing.
Meanwhile, another animated movie, Steven Spielberg's Tintin got off to a strong start in 19 foreign markets where it collected an estimated $55.8 million. In 17 of those markets, it opened at number one, including the United Kingdom, where it took in $10.7 million and France, where it amassed $21.5 million. While Paramount handled the film in the U.K., Sony rolled it out in the other territories. The movie opens stateside via Paramount on Dec. 21.
While Puss challenged the holiday – Halloween weekend is usually reserved for scary movies rather than family fare – a ghost story did hold down the second slot as Paramount’s Paranormal Activity 3 slid 65 percent as it entered its second weekend. The second prequel to 2009’s original Paranormal Activity, the new movie took in an additional $18.5 million to bring its domestic gross to $81.3 million.
In addition to Puss and Paranormal, Paramount also had a third entry in the top five as the toe-tapping Footloose, in its third weekend, took in $5.4 million for fourth-place standing, bringing its domestic total to $38.4 million.
Overall, business in North America totalled $96.3 million, up 8 percent from the comperable weekend last year, but it would have been higher if it were not for the freak snowstorm that affected the Northeast. While Saturday grosses in Los Angeles were up 36 percent over Friday's numbers, the Saturday returns in New York were up only 7 percent. DWA estimated that Puss would probably have grossed a few million dollars more if it hadn't encountered the bad weather.
A spin-off from DWA's popular Shrek franchise, the PG-rated Puss, directed by Chris Miller, opened below the norm for most of DWA's movies. The company, though, made a calculated move by shifting the film's release, originally scheduled for Nov. 4 up a week to a weekend not traditionally used to launch family films because of the competing holiday activities. Now, Puss, which earned an A- CinemaScore, has two more open weekends ahead of it before an onslaught of family movies that begin to hit theaters on Nov. 18 when Warners' Happy Feet Two opens.
"The movie came in close to where we expected, given the holiday weekend," said DWA chief marketing officer Anne Globe. "We think we're well positioned to take advantage of the next two weekends."
In terms of its audience, the animated flick, which opened in 3,952 theaters, skewed female (59 percent) and 55 percent of moviegoers were 25 or over. Kids under 12 made up 32 percent of the audience, while parents represented 36 percent of the total.
The film did particularly well with Latinos, who made up 35 percent of its audience. DWA had made a particular bid for that demographic, given that the movie features Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek, voicing the feline characters. The studio had a major tie-in with Univision, and four of the top-ten theaters showing the movie turned out to be in the Miami area.
The film, which got a number of good reviews for its use of 3D, also saw an uptick in the percentage of its gross which came from 3D theaters, with 51 percent of the total coming from 3D houses and 7 percent of its total coming from Imax screens.
In Time's $12 million debut won't boost Timberlake's standing as a box office draw, "But even though we were up against game 7 of the World Series on Friday and a pretty severe storm on Saturday, we still came in right around pre-release expectations," Fox distribution exec Chris Aronson said.
The PG-13 movie, directed by Andrew Niccol and also starring Amanda Seyfried, opened in 3,122 theaters. While its overall CinemaScore rating was B-, younger audiences were more positive about the movie, set in a world where no one ages over 25. Younger males gave it an A- and younger females gave it a B+, "So we think there's a lot of playability in the picture,"Aronson said.
Next Up: Brett Ratner's comedy Tower Heist hopes to steal a first place win; You can start celebrating the holidays with A Very Harold & Kumar 3-D Christmas
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