Jodie Foster added another number one movie to her roster this weekend, but it was still a bit of a disappointing bow for her latest. The Brave One opened in the US with an estimated $14million, a fairly low number for the top slot and Foster's smallest first weekend haul since Anna And The King in 1999.
However, The Brave One still had a comfortable lead on the number 2 movie. Last week's top film 3:10 To Yuma slipped a place, with $9,150,000. That's a drop of just 34.8% and means the Rusell Crowe/Christian Bale starrer could be a slow burner, having made $28million in its first two weeks.
The much-troubled Mr Woodcock took third place. The poorly reviewed comedy, in which Billy Bob Thornton plays a tyrannical teacher who starts dating the mother of one of his ex-victims (Sean William Scott), has been waiting for release for a year and landed with little impact with $9,100,000.
One film that surprised a lot of people was fourth place movie Dragon Wars, which took $5.4million. The movie, based on a Korean legend, features lots of huge snakey, dragony things attacking LA and nobody you could call a big name. Its biggest star is Jason Behr, aka That guy from that TV show about alien kids that also starred Katherine Heigl. Much of the film's success could be down to a strong poster campaign and the fact that it's the only big effects picture currently on wide release.
Much further down the list, both Beatles musical curio Across The Universe and David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises made strong limited release openings. At 17 on the chart, Across The Universe snagged an impressive screen average of $29,782 at 23 screens, giving it a total of $685,000. Eastern Promises' screen average was even higher at $36,866, giving it $553,00 on 15 screens.