TOP 10: The Rock is above the TUSCAN SUN

By: Patrick Sauriol
Date: Monday, September 29, 2003

The Rock's new film THE RUNDOWN was enough to knock last week's champ, UNDERWORLD, from top spot at this past weekend's box office. Universal's RUNDOWN performed admirably with $18.5 million dollars over the pic's first three days. It's not as large as UNDERWORLD's opening ($21.7 M) and maybe the Universal peeps were hoping for a bigger bite of the audience, but it's still by no means a letdown.

UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, which feature no werewolves, vampires or former wrestlers-turned-actors, did just fine and came in second place -- well, at least for the moment. Remember that these are still estimates for the weekend's grosses and right now TUSCAN has just an estimated $6K more than UNDERWORLD, the third place movie. New Line's SECONDHAND LIONS had a good second weekend take, and the other new release, DUPLEX, performed a little shaky with just under $5 M in ticket sales.

Two other items of note:

-- Considering its playing on less than 500 screens, Sofia Coppola's LOST IN TRANSLATION is doing great business. Word of mouth is generating continued ticket sales and the film could be an early frontrunner for Oscar consideration (will it be Bill Murray's lucky year?)

-- After 12 weeks in release, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN has finally dropped off the top ten (it was in twelfth position this week with another $2.4 M.) With a little over $4 M left until it crosses the $300 M barrier, will the film be able to reach that plateau?




Here's the list of the top grossing films from September 26 to 28, their weekend gross and the film's total domestic gross to date:

1. THE RUNDOWN $18,500,000 $18,500,000
2. UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN $9,406,000 $$9,406,000
3. UNDERWORLD $9,400,000 $37,000,000
4. SECONDHAND LIONS $8,250,000 $23,456,000
5. THE FIGHTING TEMPTATIONS $6,475,000 $20,203,000
6. ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO $5,100,000 $49,063,000
7. DUPLEX $4,417,000 $4,417,000
8. COLD CREEK MANOR $4,300,000 $14,500,000
9. MATCHSTICK MEN $4,285,000 $30,634,000
10. LOST IN TRANSLATION $3,522,000 $8,499,000


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