Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer proved fantastic at the box office this past weekend, debuting to an estimated $57 million-plus on just over 6,200 screens. Fan-boy gripes about whether Galactus should look like this or rock out with more of the purple-and-blue classic comic look turned out not to have much of an effect on Fantastic Four‘s bottom-line grosses, powered as much by family business as diehard comic book aficionados. The opening was a bit higher than the $56.1 million haul of 2005’s series launch, and easily outpaced theatrical holdovers Ocean’s Thirteen ($19.1 million, down 47 percent from its debut June 8), Knocked Up (down 26 percent in its third week, to $14.5 million) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (down 43 percent in its fourth week of release, to just over $12 million), as well as the weekend’s only other new wide release, Nancy Drew, which bowed to only $7.1 million.

In homicidal theatrical news, meanwhile, Hostel: Part II tumbled more than 63 percent in its sophomore frame, pulling in $3 million for a two-week total of just over $14 million. If writer-director Eli Roth‘s first film was a xenophobic travelogue recast as a grim exercise in “BTK-horror,” this movie highlights the amorality angle even more starkly (“We’re the normal ones,” says one of two American businessmen who eventually don swim caps and slaughterhouse gear for their vicarious thrill-kill sessions), something audiences apparently had less of an appetite for.

Kevin Costner’s wildly careening serial killer tale Mr. Brooks, on the other hand, scratched out another $2.8 million in its third weekend, bringing its total haul to $23.5 million. Made for a cost-conscious $20 million, foreign receipts and ancillary revenues might actually be enough to help realize the filmmakers’ visions of a sequel and/or franchise, an ambiguity that most certainly doesn’t await 20th Century Fox’s Fantastic Four. Stay tuned…