The Town arrests US audiences

Ben Affleck’s sophomore directing gig side-stepped the ‘difficult second movie’ curse this weekend as it dove straight to the top of the box office.

Opening with an impressive $23.8m, The Town obliterated the box office takings of Affleck’s first feature Gone Baby Gone, which only managed to make $20m in its entire cinematic run.

The nearest competition against Affleck’s crime drama came in the form of Emma Stone’s high school comedy Easy A , which entered the charts in second place with $18.2m, while other new-opener Devil went straight into third with $12.5m.

(We’re happy to note that Devil has earned decent reviews despite the fact that M. Night Shyamalan’s attached as producer. Clearly audiences don’t mind his name being on movies if he isn't directing.)

Resident Evil: Afterlife found itself spun from the top spot into fourth place with $10.1m, and the week’s final new opener, CGI wolf tale Alpha And Omega settled for fifth place and a drab $9.2m.

Last week’s box office leaders Takers and The American both plummeted to sixth and seventh ($3m and $2.7m respectively), while Inception moved up two places to eighth ($2m). Movie fans just can’t get enough of Chris Nolan’s mind trip, it seems.

The Other Guys started a slow decline, slipping from sixth to ninth ($2m) and Machete went all the way from fourth to tenth ($1.7m). Does that mean we won’t get any of those proposed Machete sequels? Considering the flick’s made $24m in total (on a $20m budget), we wouldn’t bet against it.

Next week Legends Of The Guardians, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and You Again are opening. Can they topple Affleck’s Town ?

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.