‘Collateral’ tops weekend box office

Tue., Aug. 10, 2004

David Germain Associated Press

Good guy or bad guy, Tom Cruise is still No. 1.

Cruise’s “Collateral,” in which he plays a psychotic hit man who hijacks a taxi for a one-night killing spree, debuted as the top weekend movie with $24.4 million, according to studio estimates.

It was an unusually dark role for Cruise, best known for playing the hero. Jamie Foxx co-stars as the cabbie, while Michael Mann (“Ali,” “The Insider”) directed.

“Collateral” bumped off the previous weekend’s top movie, the fright flick “The Village,” which took in $16.6 million – a steep 67 percent tumble from its opening-weekend receipts. “The Village” pushed its 10-day total to $85.7 million.

The Matt Damon spy sequel “The Bourne Supremacy” and the remake of “The Manchurian Candidate” came in third and fourth, earning an estimated $14.1 and $10.8 million, respectively.

The weekend’s other new wide release, the Brittany Murphy romantic comedy “Little Black Book,” opened weakly in fifth place with $7 million.

The overall box office was down sharply. The top 12 movies grossed $97.7 million, off 23 percent from the same weekend last year, when “S.W.A.T.” and “Freaky Friday” both opened strongly.

“This is why they call it the dog days of August,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. “Summers always surprise you. They either slow down at the end or they peak at the end.”

Summer revenues remain about 6 percent ahead of 2003’s, when Hollywood took in a record $3.9 billion from early May through Labor Day weekend.

While the R-rated “Collateral” did only about half the opening-weekend business of Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible” movies, its debut was in line with his last two R-rated films, 2003’s “The Last Samurai” ($24.3 million) and 2001’s “Vanilla Sky” ($25 million).

With good reviews and an older target audience, “Collateral” has potential to hold well at the box office in the coming weeks.

Sixty percent of the audience was older than 25, according to distributor DreamWorks, and upcoming releases such as “Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement” (opening Wednesday) and “Alien vs. Predator” (opening Friday) appeal to younger crowds.

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