Burn After Reading Ignites Box Office

Four new films ruled the box office this past weekend — each topping eight figures, which has to be some sort of record for September. Burn After Reading, the Coen brothers’ follow-up to the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, earned the top spot, bringing in an estimated $19.1 million to edge out Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys, which slotted second with $17.4 million. Playing at almost 1,100 fewer screens than the latter film, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro’s Righteous Kill committed wallet robbery to the tune of $16.3 million. Diane English’s star-studded ensemble The Women, meanwhile, debuted to $10.1 million.

After that quartet of films, there was a steep drop-off. Ben Stiller’s R-rated ensemble war comedy Tropic Thunder, which my dad inexplicably hated, by way of explaining only that “it wasn’t funny,” placed fifth. The movie added an estimated $4.2 million to its total haul, which now stands at $103 million domestically. Rounding out the top 10 were Anna Faris’ The House Bunny, with $4.15 million ($42 million overall); Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight
, with $4.13 million ($517.8 million overall); Nicolas Cage’s Bangkok Dangerous, with $2.6 million ($12. 6 million overall); Don Cheadle’s very Bourne-flavored Traitor, with $2.1 million ($20.7 million overall); and Jason Statham’s Death Race, with $2 million and change ($33.2 million overall). Expected to take the top spot this coming weekend is the bad-neighbor drama Lakeview Terrace, with writer-director David Koepp’s Ghost Town, starring Ricky Gervais and Greg Kinnear, providing competition.

One thought on “Burn After Reading Ignites Box Office

  1. 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

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