The undead hordes swept the box office in the US this weekend, with rom-zom-com Zombieland marching straight to the top with a pretty respectable $25 million opening weekend. In its wake was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, falling off the top after two weeks, and the re-released double-bill of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in 3D in third. The moral of this story? If you're not in 3D, you better have zombies.
The Invention of Lying came in fourth with $7.35m, which was better than Gervais' Ghost Town but down on similar 'what if' comedies like Liar Liar. Surrogates followed, with a 50% drop on last week, and then was Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, which expanded to wide release but still made only $4.85m, less even than Sicko nevermind Fahrenheit 9/11 or Bowling for Columbine.
New release Whip It!, about a girl rollerskating team, followed that with a disappointing opening of $4.85m - apparently men didn't want to go see a film about girl sports.
Much further down the charts, the Coens' new film A Serious Man opened on only six screens and took $252,000 - not a bad average by anyone's standards. However, we somehow doubt that the willfully niche film is going to repeat those numbers when it goes national.