And so the fall movie season is off to a rip-snoring start. It was a dismal weekend at the box office, with the top 10 films failing to pull in more than $50 million, the lowest combined gross in five years. It's almost as if people wanted to breathe their last gasps of summer somewhere other than a dark theater. Go figure. The weekend after Labor Day is generally one of the lowest-grossing of the year, and the fact that the only new national contender at the multiplex was Bangkok Dangerous couldn't have done much to help matters.
Nonetheless, Nicolas Cage's newest topped the charts with $7.8 million, a relatively paltry sum that also landed it at No. 9 on the list of all-time lowest-grossing number-ones (congrats!), and just barely beat out Tropic Thunder's $7.6 million take. It speaks to the weekend's offerings that The House Bunny somehow managed to jump up a spot to No. 3, ahead of The Dark Knight, which pulled $5.7 million in its staggering eighth week. Don Cheadle's Traitor held on to the No. 5 spot for its second week, ahead of a pair of tired actioners, Babylon A.D. at No. 6 with $4 million and Death Race at No. 7 with $3.6 million. So-called "comedy" Disaster Movie managed to bilk Americans out of $3.3 million of their hard-earned dollars for a No. 8 showing, ahead of the surprisingly durable Mamma Mia! at No. 9 with $2.7 million and Pineapple Express at No. 10 with $2.4 million.
More detailed numbers can be found at boxofficemojo.com.