Good news again this week if you’re a penguin. Well, a singing, dancing, cartoon penguin, anyway. Because Happy Feet is still king of the US box office. For flightless creatures, those birds are doing a top job of staying put at the top of the charts for a third week running.
In fact, the top three this week is completely unchanged, as Casino Royale held second and Déjà Vu – we’re really not going to make a joke about the title repeating itself – was once more third, returning to the slot for a second straight week. You have to travel all the way down to fourth place to find a new film this week. And that film is The Nativity Story, which arrived with a decidedly quiet thud. $8 million is a huge disappointment considering it was in more than 3,000 cinemas. And especially since the film’s star managed to draw in mega millions for The Passion Of The Christ. Maybe they shouldn’t have limited him to just a cameo near the end this time…
Sitting in the middle of the charts are the other seasonal efforts - Deck The Halls and The Santa Clause 3. Deck is doing decent, if hardly stratospheric business, heading past $25 million after two weeks on release. Santa, meanwhile, finds his sack bulging with more than $73 million so far.
In seventh place, and looking like he might be on the final leg of his box office trek, it’s Borat, who nabbed $4.8 million this week and increased his US total to $116 million. Could be a nice wedding present for Pamela Anderson, now she’s about to be single again…
At eighth is the second of this week’s underperforming newbies. Turistas is the tale of Americans abroad who get tangled up with a nasty organ-smuggling ring. But it was the film itself that ended up in bloody pieces, making just $3.5 million. Still, that’s better than Van Wilder: The Rise Of Taj, also known as The Unwanted sequel, which flopped into 10th place, arriving beneath Stranger Than Fiction and making just $3 million. Somewhere, Ryan Reynolds is laughing his arse off.
