The Bourne Ultimatum tops the US box office

With his usual gritty style, Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne drove straight to the top of the US box office this weekend, besting not only the openings of the previous Bourne movies, but also smashing the August record with $70.2 million.

That meant The Simpsons moving home to second place, taking a 65.4% dive in ticket sales, but still managing to earn $25.6 million, for a US total of $128.6 million so far, with plenty of cash from us European types to help make back its estimated $75 million budget. In third was the week’s second new arrival, cartoon adaptation Underdog. The hero’s tale switched to live action (think Babe, but with a talking dog) and arrived with an estimated $12 million.

The two new arrivals pushed I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry down two places to fourth, where it suckered $10.5 million from moviegoers to rest on a $91.7 million total to date. And at fifth we find Hairspray, which nabbed $9.33 million and has taken in $79 million after three weeks in cinemas.

That week total put it just ahead of Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, which fell to sixth, but with an impressive $260.8 million so far in the US alone. Looks like the franchise is still going strong. Meanwhile in rom-dramady land (is that a genre?) Catherine Zeta-Jones’ No Reservations slipped down to seventh in its second weekend, with a weekly take of $6.6 million.

Transformers, meanwhile, is powering towards the $300 million total for the US, nabbing $5.95 million and reaching $296.3 million to date, and eighth in the charts.

But there was some seriously bad news for the people behind the new comedy Hot Rod and the toy tie-in Bratz. Despite being hilarious, the laugh-fest from Saturday Night Live regular Andy Samberg could only scrape up $5 million in its launch week, while the toy line pic arrived with a paltry $4.3 million in 10th place.