Waiting for Halloween

Non-genre films dominate. Will Friday the 13th boost next weekend's horror revenues?

By Steve Biodrowski     October 10, 2000

Meet the Parents and Remember the Titans were way out front at the box office this weekend, followed by Get Carter in a distant third. The top genre film was 4th ranked The Exorcist, which added $4.44-million to its $23.94-million re-release gross. It will be interesting to see what happens on the Friday the 13th weekend, when New Line opens its would-be Exorcist imitator, Lost Souls, while The Exorcist itself will expand onto an additional 400 screens in anticipation of Halloween.

The genre's only wide release debut, Digimon: The Movie, which took 5th place, managed $4.23-million, slightly ahead of Monday's studio estimate. In 6th was Urban Legends: Final Cut, earned $2.61-million, raising its total to $18.24-million. In an upset victory, The Watcher and Nurse Betty edged What Lies Beneath out of the Top Ten. Watcher had been predicted to take the #9 slot, with Watcher and Betty battling it out for 10th place. Instead, in nearly a three-way tie, it was Watcher in 9th, Betty in 10th, and Beneath in 11th, with $1.15-million, $1.13-million, and $1.12-million, respectively. That raised Beneath's cume to $152.14-million, making it one of the biggest horror films of recent years, and it seems likely to surpass both Scary Movie and X-Men in this year's box office race.

The only other debut of interest to genre fans was CyberWorld, which is playing in 21 Imax theatres around the nation. In its first weekend, the film earned just a hair under $278,200, for a not bad per screen average of just over $13,250.

Below are the final figures for this weekend's box office results, including the Top Ten film, plus any other science fiction, horror and fantasy films in the Top Sixty.

U.S. Box Office Finals for 10/6 to 10/8/2000
1.	Meet the Parents	$28.62-million/$28.62-million
2.	Remember the Titans	$19.209-million/$45.86--million
3.	Get Carter	$6.64-million/$6.64-million
4.	The Exorcist	$4.44-million/$23.94-million
5.	Digimon: The Movie	$4.23-million/$4.23-million
6.	Almost Famous	$3.72-million/$3.72-million
7.	Urban Legends: Final Cut	$2.61-million/$18.24-million
8.	Bring It On	$2.26-million/$62.50-million
9.	The Watcher	$1.15-million/$27.84-million
10.	Nurse Betty	$1.13-million/$22.77-million
11.	What Lies Beneath	$1.12-million/$152.14-million
12.	Space Cowboys	$882-thousand/$88.24-million
17.	The Cell	$529-thousand/$60.01-million
20.	The Nutty Professor II	$440-thousand/$121.41 -million
21.	Scary Movie	$421-thousand/$155.53 -million
25.	X-Men	$341-thousand/$156.16 -million
27.	Chicken Run	$318-thousand/$105.90-million
28.	The Kid	$293-thousand/$68.90 -million
29.	CyberWorld	$278-thousand/$278-thousand
32.	Dinosaur	$211-thousand/$136.79 -million
42.	Bless the Child	$103-thousand/$29.00-million
45.	Hollow Man	$92-thousand/$72.85 -million
46.	Highlander: Endgame	$90-thousand/$12.67 -million
49.	T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous	$60-thousand/$34.69 -million
50.	Cirque du Soleil Journey of Man	$59-thousand/$7.16 -million
51.	Mission Impossible II	$59-thousand/$215.35-million
58.	Alien Adventure	$40-thousand/$3.05-million

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