Box Office - 'Burn After Reading' Wins Busy Friday

There's a slight surprise at the top of the Friday box office. Box Office Mojo estimates that Burn After Reading won its opening day by about $100,000 over Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys. It's still early and that could change, but it would be a first for the Coens if they held on. There are other considerations, like the fact that Burn After Reading is in over 400 more theaters, but even with that, the worst the movie could do is third place, and that would require a lot of activity from Righteous Kill, which currently holds that spot. Because there's no clear-cut favorite - the top three films are separated by only $600,000 - it's tough to predict it that order would remain the same; on Thursday, we felt that Tyler Perry, who has been very successful with all but a couple of his Lionsgate releases, would benefit from audiences torn between seeing Clooney and Pitt and De Niro and Pacino. Going for a completely different audience, The Women opened in fourth place. The Family That Preys is leading the pack for per-screen average, but it will likely need a big Saturday to overtake Burn After Reading. Should Burn hold on, and Focus Features can celebrate the number one movie in America (when was the last time that happened?), it would show that the Coens are mainstream enough, and that should help them, ironically, continue to make movies outside the mainstream. Speaking of per-screen average, outside of the top four films, all new releases, the top performer was, you guessed it, The Dark Knight, which has tumbled out of the top three for the first time in its two-month history. Most likely, the Batman movie will finish in seventh place this week.