For only the second time this year (Mel Gibson's The Passion actually topped the box office charts four times), a film has scored three consecutive wins in the weekly box office derby as Shark Tale, which declined only 29%, amassed an estimated $22.1 million over the past weekend. That was far more than needed top the second place film, the high school football drama, Friday Night Lights, which took in an estimated $13 million.
Matt Stone and Trey Parker's Team America: World Police, a savage satire that ravages both President Bush's aggressive, pre-emptive foreign policy and the hand-wringing liberalism of 'committed' Hollywood stars such as Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins, finished a somewhat disappointing third with an estimated total of $12.3 million. Parker and Stone were reportedly aghast at the notion of a live action remake of Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation Thunderbirds series, and the South Park duo made Team America to demonstrate that the 'cool' element of the Thunderbirds series was the puppetry, not the repetitive grade 'D' plotlines. Regardless of how disappointing Team America's debut may have been in the eyes of some industry analysts who thought it might top the weekend box office, it actually did slightly more business than the 1999 South Park movie and has easily eclipsed the debut of the disastrous live action Thunderbirds film--plus the DVD version of Team America, which will undoubtedly include the infamous puppet sex scene that had to be cut out of the theatrical prints to avoid an 'NC 17 rating, is going to sell big time.
