BOX OFFICE: BORAT rises in it's second week!

Borat was added to more theatres this weekend and made more money than last, in what was a lackluster weekend for new releases. The movie took in $29 million, up nearly 10% from last week, catapulting it's box office take to $67.8 million so far. The Santa Clause 3 and Flushed Away managed to keep their second and third place respectively with low % drops from the week before. The Aardman animated feature Flushed Away especially performing much better than expected as it's total is around $7 million ahead of last year's Wallace and Gromit after the same release period of two weeks. Stranger than Fiction, the biggest new release of the week only managed to come in at fourth. It took in a low key $14.1 million in it's opening weekend, around half of the film's budget and marks the worst opening of a Will Ferrell movie since he became a lead actor. Just shows the balance between achieving critical and commercial success for a comedy actor is so hard to find, usually you can only have one. Elsewhere, Saw III's total has now made a domestic profit of $60 million, with worldwide figures looking strong and DVD sales likely to be high, the Saw franchise is a long way from ending. Another horror flick didn't quite have the same luck this week though, the Sarah Michelle Gellar star vehicle The Return debuted at 8. A low key marketing campaign and a release date a couple of weeks to late could be blamed for it's poor opening. And that it looked shit of course. The Christian Bale indie drama Harsh Times took in a very low $1.8 million taking, debuting at 13 in the charts and is likely to fade just as quickly as it did in the U.K. Estimated U.S. top ten for weekend of November 10-12: Title Weekend Gross Budget 1. Borat - $29,000,000 ($67,840,000) ($18,000,000) 2. The Santa Clause 3 - $16,893,000 ($41,052,000) budget undisclosed 3. Flushed Away - $16,710,000 ($39,931,000) budget undisclosed 4. Stranger Than Fiction - $14,100,000 ($14,100,000) ($30,000,000) 5. Saw III - $6,600,000 ($69,879,000) ($10,000,000) 6. Babel - $5,651,000 ($7,488,000) budget undisclosed 7. The Departed - $5,240,000 ($109,778,000) $90,000,000 8. The Return - $4,776,000 ($4,776,000) budget undisclosed 9. The Prestige - $4,630,000 ($46,037,000) ($40,000,000) 10. A Good Year - $3,775,000 ($3,775,000) ($35,000,000) OPENING NEXT WEEK CASINO ROYALE, Fast Food Nation, Happy Feet, Let's Go to Prison, The Aura (limited), Come Early Morning (limited), Candy, Hood of Horror (limited) source - box office mojo