Disney fairy-tale romantic comedy "Enchanted" stayed on top of the
box office in the United States and Canada for a second weekend,
while overall ticket sales returned to the slump after a booming
Thanksgiving holiday, preliminary figures released Sunday showed.
"Enchanted," a film about a cartoon princess who is exiled from
the fairyland to real-world New York, took in about 17 million
dollars over the three-day period. It has earned nearly 71 million
dollars since its release before the Thanksgiving.
Meanwhile, Sony's black-themed comedy "This Christmas" and
Paramount's 3-D animated saga of "Beowulf" remained at No. 2 and
No. 3 over weekend, with 8.4 million and 7.9 million dollars
respectively.
Weinstein Co.'s operation room thriller "Awake" became the only
new release in the top 10. The film about a Wall Street banker who
is conscious during heart surgery opened at No. 4 with 6 million
dollars, followed by 20th Century Fox's video-game adaptation
"Hitman" with 5.8 million dollars.
The top-selling 12 films in North America took in 76.6 million
dollars collectively this weekend, a 6-percent decline from the
same weekend last year and only nearly half of that in last
weekend, according to Los Angeles-based box office tracking firm
Media By Numbers.
However, with the record ticket sales it has achieved this
summer with a slew of blockbusters, Hollywood's domestic take so
far this year reached about 8.7 billion dollars this week, up 4.7
percent from the same period last year.
(Xinhua News Agency December 3, 2007)
