Weekend Box Office: Michael Myers beaten up by Death and, erm, Mike Myers

As expected, the 3-D horror flick "The Final Destination" won the battle of horror sequels this weekend at the national box office, easily beating out Rob Zombie's "Halloween II" by a comfortable margin. Overall, the theaters remained surprisingly busy given the time of the year.

Apparently, the best way to revive a franchise is to film it in 3-D. The "Final Destination" series, which has done pretty well for Warner/New Line over the past decade, pulled in an estimated $28.3 million in ticket sales. Opening with close to $11 million on Friday, the film dropped only slightly on Saturday (sequels, especially horror sequels, tend to drop a fair bit after opening day) to around $10 million. The opening is the best of the series so far, which all but guarantees that this "Destination" will not be the "Final" one.

"Halloween II", Rob Zombie's grisly follow up to his 2007 remake (but not a remake of the 1981 sequel to the John Carpenter original) gross an estimated $17.4 million in sales. The film, which seems to be equally hated by auidences (tons of fun comments on the internets to read, folks!) and critics (check out my friend's review here), started with $7 million on Friday and dropped roughly 20% each day from there. Rob Zombie stated that this will be his last "Halloween" film. Fingers crossed (EDIT: apparently, wishing doesn't make it so. There will be a "Halloween III". And hey! It's going to be...wait for it...in 3-D!!!!!)

The weekend's other wide opener, Focus Features' comedy "Taking Woodstock", which flatlined with an estimated $3.74 million to open in ninth place from 1,300 screens (bummer, man). Summit Features was taken to task over its mis-marketing on the well-received but ignored teen film "Bandslam" a couple of weeks ago. Well, Focus Features should also be chided for the way it handled "Woodstock", not because of the reception the film recieved from critics (split right down the middle, it appears) but because of the timing. Two weeks ago, there were tons of stories floating around about the 40th Anniversary of the Woodstock Music Festival. But once the anniversay passed, the interest understandably faded as did any real interest in a movie about preparing the festival. I'll be curious to hear what the reasoning might be for opening the movie on this weekend as opposed to the weekend of the 15th.

"Halloween II"s mediocre grosses aside, overall it was a good weekend for the Weinstein Company. Second spot belonged to last weekend's winner and another film released by the house that Harvey & Bob Weinstein built and one that has a small role by another Michael Myers (that being Mike "Shrek" Myers), "Inglourious Basterds". Dropping by an understandable 47% to an estimated $20 million, Quentin Tarantino's World War II epic saw its gross rise to roughly $74 million after ten days. If the film continues to hold up, "Basterds" will pass "Pulp Fiction" to become QT's biggest hit to date. However, if one is to adjust for inflation, "IB" has a long way to go.

Fourth went to "District 9", which is holding quite well during the dog days of August. Dropping by roughly 40%, the South African sci-fi drama pulled in roughly $11 million for a $91 million gross and a guaranteed $100 box office by Labor Day. Fifth spot went to "G.I. Joe", which pulled in another $8 million to bring its gross to nearly $132 million thus far. Spots six and seven went to two films showing some pretty strong legs of their own: "Julie & Julia" with $7.4 million ($71.5 mil thus far) and sleeper hit "The Time Traveler's Wife" with $7 million ($49 mil to date).

Next weekend, the summer movie season closes out with Mike Judge's new work comedy "Extract", the Sandra Bullock comedy "All About Steve" (filmed over two years ago) and something with Gerard Butler called "Gamer", which looks exactly like the type of action film you would put out on a holiday weekend where no one goes to the movie, perhaps not even me.