Tagged: Taken

Perry On Top

Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail topped Oscar weekend box office by a huge margin last weekend as the “monster of indy black comedy” swallowed first position hole with a total take of $41 million in its initial bow. No Kohler faucet were harmed in the making of that movie, either!

But the rest of the weekend box office was hurting as only two other films broke the $10 million barrier; children’s animated fantasy Coraline, as well as the thriller-action flick Taken, but with about $11 million coming in last weekend. Everything else was down, but most notable was the plunge taken by Friday the 13th, which dropped over 80 percent on bad word-of-mouth. The slasher rehash took in just under $8 million, falling all the way from first to sixth.

Worst initial bow of the weekend goes to Fired Up, which managed only $5.4 million.

Moviegoers “Into You,” even if “He’s” not…

The bluntly-worded relationship advice bestseller, “He’s Just Not That Into You,” is now the box office champion relationship movie of the weekend. Raking in $27.4 million, the flick blew away the competition.

Not as literally, however, as Liam Neeson’s latest thriller, “Taken,” which posted a strong second weekend, adding around $20.3 million to its now 10-day total of $53.3 million. Not bad for an actor who allegedly “quit” the movie biz a few years ago after his involvement with the Star Wars franchises; since then, Neeson’s wowed audiences with his portrayal of Ras Ah Ghul in Batman Begins, as well as his intense turn in Taken. In fact, Neeson’s arguably appeared in better roles since “quitting” Hollywood than before; he’s appeared in about a dozen films since souring on Tinseltown after 2002′s Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, and he has at least five more roles scheduled between now and 2011, in which he’s expected to turn in a performance as Abraham Lincoln in a bio-film named, simply, Lincoln.

Coraline, the twisted children’s film from the pen of Neil Gaiman, came in third with $16.3 million, while Steve Martin’s sequel, Pink Panther 2, managed only $12.0 million for fourth place, despite appearing on over 1,000 more screens. Paul Blart: Mall Cop rounded out the Top 5 with $11.0 million and the sci-fi, comic book-inspired thriller Push could manage no better than sixth place with an anemic $10.2 million.

Everything else trailed badly.