Joel and Ethan Coen's Burn After Reading beat Tyler Perry at the North American box office this weekend with US$19.4 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Starring George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, and John Malkovich, the crime comedy delivered the best opening ever for a Coen brothers film, surpassing the $12.6 million earned by The Ladykillers in 2004.
Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys, starring Perry, Kathy Bates, and Alfre Woodard, debuted in second place with $18 million, which is less than the opening weekend grosses of his previous films Meet the Browns ($20 million) and Why Did I Get Married? ($21.3 million).
Meanwhile, Jon Avnet's crime drama Righteous Kill opened at No. 3 with $16.5 million. Starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, the film follows two veteran NYPD detectives struggling to hunt down a mysterious serial killer.
The Women, the weekend's other nationwide release, ranked fourth with $10.1 million in ticket sales. The Diane English-directed comedy stars Meg Ryan, Annette Bening, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Debra Messing as four best friends who help support each other in times of misery. Eva Mendes co-stars.
At No. 5, Fred Wolf's The House Bunny collected $4.3 million, lifting its domestic total to $42.1 million after four weeks in release. Sony's Anna Faris vehicle tells the story of a former Playboy bunny who becomes the housemother of a geeky sorority.
Slipping to sixth place was Ben Stiller's action comedy Tropic Thunder, which picked up $4.1 million to reach a total gross of $102.9 million after a strong five-week run. Following at No. 7 was The Dark Knight (above), which brought its cumulative gross to $517.6 million after this weekend's earnings of $4 million.
Last week's box-office champion, Bangkok Dangerous, dropped all the way to eighth place, taking home $2.4 million. Starring Nicolas Cage as a hit man who falls in love during a crucial assignment, the film brought its domestic total to a paltry $12.5 million.
Rounding out the top 10 were Jeffrey Nachmanoff's Traitor, with a weekend gross of $2.1 million and a cume of $20.7 million, and Paramount's Paul W.S. Anderson-directed Death Race, which with a total of $33.1 million.
Source: Box Office Mojo (www.boxofficemojo.com)
Brad Pitt can be so funny, as long as he's not taking himself too seriously… in any case, it's about time someone made good use of his habitually spastic arm movements