March 30th, 2004

Scooby-Dough

Despite being panned by practically every critic in the country, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed proved to be review-proof as it grossed a strong 29.4 million dollars. While this is not nearly as good as what the first one opened with in June 2002, it's still a rather impeccable start. Also off to a decent start was the new Coen Brothers comedy, The Ladykillers. With 12.6 million for the weekend, if word of mouth is decent, it could have legs. If not, expect it to fall the way of last October's "Intolerable Cruelty."

Dropping to third but holding well was The Passion Of The Christ with another 12.5 million. Dawn Of The Dead took a pretty big stumble, as it only brought in 10.6 million for the weekend. But Kevin Smith's heartfelt comedy Jersey Girl seemed to overcome a lot of negative buzz (mainly in part due to the movie) "Gigli" and made a nice 8.3 million. Given the film is only in about 1500 theaters, that's not bad at all. The film will expand to more theaters within the next two weeks.

Taking Lives has turned out to be a dud with only 6.5 million over the weekend, while the comedy Starsky and Hutch snapped on another 6.2 million. Hidalgo and Secret Window took in about 5.3 million each, while rounding out the top ten was the fabulous Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind with 5.2 million.

Can yet another comic book hero overtake the box office next weekend? Stay tuned, DVD fans!

-Zach B.