Jodie Foster's airplane thriller Flightplan easily outdistanced Tim Burton's Corpse Bride in the weekend box office derby.  Flightplan earned $24.6 million to the Corpse Bride's $20.1, and won the per theater average battle as well--$7,198 to $6,282.  It should be interesting to see which film ends up with a higher domestic gross; Flightplan has a big lead now but animated films usually have more 'legs' than thrillers.

 

Compared with the Burton-produced The Nightmare Before Christmas, which opened with an $8. 2 weekend and eventually grossed $50.3 million domestically in 1993, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride opened in twice as many theaters and had a distinctly better per theater average.  Does this mean it will do a lot better than Nightmare or is it just an indication of the advances in movie marketing getting more fans into the theater on the opening weekend?  Time will tell.

 

New Line's A History of Violence, which is based on the DC graphic novel written by John Wagner, did very in limited release at 14 theaters earning a weekend best $36,000 per screen.  Next weekend A History of Violence will go into wider release and also compete head-to-head with Joss Whedon's Serenity.  With a new edition of John Wagner's graphic novel available from DC and a plethora of Serenity products including comics from Dark Horse, trading cards from Inkworks, action figures from Diamond Select, magazines from Titan and an RPG from Margaret Weis Productions, a lot of pop culture retailers will have a stake in the outcome of next weekend's box office contest.