LOS ANGELES ~ Disney’s clean-cut High School Musical 3: Senior Year kept would-be porn stars Zack and Miri at bay to keep its top slot on the North American weekend earnings list, final industry figures showed.
The preteen-targeting sing-along earned US$15 million in weekend ticket sales – paltry for the top earner, in a weekend that saw the overall box office gross down 39 percent from the same weekend last year, according to data compiled by Exhibitor Relations.
Musical bested the uncomfortably-named Zack and Miri Make a Porno, a raunchy slacker comedy in which financially strapped friends played by Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks decide to make a do-it-yourself pornographic film but end up falling in love. The film debuted in second spot with a little over $10 million.
The latest horror franchise Saw V slipped one spot to third, scaring up $9.7 million on the Halloween weekend, while the latest Angelina Jolie vehicle Changeling, Clint Eastwood’s drama about a mother desperate to find her missing boy, moved up fourth, earning $9.35 million.
The teen slasher The Haunting of Molly Hartley debuted in fifth place, taking in $5.4 million.
The pooches of Beverly Hills Chihuahua slipped two spots to sixth with a $4.9-million take and pushing the film’s five-week total box office earnings to $84 million.
Close on their heels was The Secret Life of Bees, the screen version of the novel by Sue Monk Kidd, featuring Oscar-winning actress and singer Jennifer Hudson, taking in $4 million.
Max Payne, Fox’s noir, fantasy-tinged movie based on the bestselling video game and starring Mark Wahlberg as a revenge-driven undercover New York cop, came in eighth earning $3.7 million.
In ninth place, futuristic thriller Eagle Eye took in $3.5 million for a six-week total of $92.6 million.
In 10th place was Gavin O’Connor’s cop film Pride and Glory, starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell, with $3.4 million.
Oliver Stone’s biography of President George W. Bush, W, slipped to 11th place with $2.4 million, nipping Ridley Scott’s spy thriller Body of Lies with $2.3 million.