Box Office - 'Nightmare on Elm Street' Opens Strong

With nothing in its way, A Nightmare on Elm Street tooks to completely dominate the weekend box office. Yesterday was huge - $15.9 million - but a look at Thursday's midnight numbers (an apparent horror movie record $1.6 million) indicate that a big start was probably in the cards. Here's an interesting stat: The rest of the top ten only made $16.3 million combined, so we'll see if Elm Street can pull off the rare feat of outgrossing the rest of the top ten for an entire weekend. Probably not, because horror movies almost always peak on Friday, but even with that knowledge, Elm Street is poised to rake in at least $35 million. Because nothing else made over $3 million, you might think there's nothing left to talk about at the box office. But there's a big logjam between second and fifth place, and it's hard to determine which movie will come out on top in that race. Odds are, it'll probably be How to Train Your Dragon thanks to those great weekend holds over the past month and its current second place estimate after Friday, but it's only $100 ahead of Date Night, which is only $100,000 ahead of The Back-Up Plan, which is only $400,000 ahead of The Losers. Dragon added $2.6 million more to its slow, deliberate climb toward $200 million, and Date Night will hit at least $80 million by the time it's through. The rest of the top ten, minus Clash of the Titans, features movies that really should have made more money and certainly had the chance to do so.