Cars Cruises To Second Week As Box Office Best

Cars may be just an animated children’s film, but it’s not showing any signs of slowing down at the box office.

Thanks to a $31.2 million second week haul, the Disney-Pixar feature maintained the number one position by holding off a couple of live action new releases.

With a 10-day total of $114.5 million, the film cruised past the Jack Black Mexican wrestling spoof Nacho Libre and speed thriller retread The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.

The former stars Black as a cook at a Mexican orphanage who takes up wrestling to buy better food for the kids, and debuted in second place with $27.5 million.

Meanwhile, the third edition in the Fast and the Furious racing franchise opened at No. 3 with $24.1 million. The flick stars Lucas Black as a speed freak caught up in Japan’s illegal racing scene.

   Other new releases included Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in the romantic drama The Lake House, and another animated pic, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, with Bill Murray assuming the voice of the famous lasagna-loving cat. They opened with $13.7 and $7.2 million respectively.

But for family fun, neither could touch Cars.

“I guess the family audience picked their favourite and decided that this is what it was going to be,” said Chuck Viane, head of distribution at Disney.

Elsewhere, in the battle of limited release movies, the clear-cut winner was IFC Films crossword-puzzle documentary Wordplay, which opened with $34,959 at two New York City theatres. The film features interviews with crossword enthusiasts like Bill Clinton, comic Jon Stewart and New York Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina.

All of that added up to a nice weekend for Hollywood, where overall business rose for the fifth-straight weekend. The top 12 movies took in $139.1 million, a seven per cent hike from the same weekend last year.

   Here’s the rest of the weekend’s top ten, with all figures estimated according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

1. Cars, $31.2 million.

2. Nacho Libre, $27.5 million.

3. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, $24.1 million.

4. The Lake House, $13.7 million.

5. The Break-Up, $9.5 million.

6. Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties, $7.2 million.

7. X-Men: The Last Stand, $7.15 million.

8. The Omen, $5.35 million.

9. The Da Vinci Code, $5 million.

10. Over the Hedge, $4.05 million.

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