Sony's Underworld: Evolution topped the weekend box office with an estimated total of $27.6 million, the fourth highest January opening in history.  The original Underworld film opened in September of 2003 with a $21.8 million total and went on to earn $52 at the domestic box office.  Game publisher White Wolf, Inc. and author Nancy Collins sued Sony over the original Underworld film based on a number of similarities between the film's Romeo & Juliet love affair between representatives of long-feuding tribes of vampires and werewolves and stories and scenarios written for White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Ms. Collins' story 'Love of Monsters,' which was set in White Wolf's World of Darkness (see ' White Wolf & Nancy Collins Sue Sony'). 

 

Underworld: Evolution, which like the first Underworld film stars Kate Beckinsale and her skintight leather pants, demonstrated once again the box office potential of the sexy vampire genre by earning a very respectable $8,606 per location.  The only film in semi-wide release that came close to that average was Brokeback Mountain, which came in at #5 and earned $6,548 per theater.

 

Hoodwinked, the computer-animated reworking of Little Red Riding Hood, which was the #1 film last week, declined only 11% and finished in second place with an estimated total of $11 million.

 

Disney's Narnia fell by nearly 40% in its seventh week of release, but still brought in an estimated $6 million and brought its cumulative to $271 million.  Domestically Narnia looks like it will pass Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and become the second highest grossing film released in 2005.  Meanwhile Peter Jackson's King Kong fell 45% and dropped out of the Top Ten and ended up in the eleventh spot.  Kong, which has racked up $209 million in the U.S., actually earned twice as much overseas last weekend it did in the States and has already taken in over $320 million outside the U.S.