Box Office: COENS first #1 BURNS De Niro/Pacino/lots of WOMEN!

Thanks in part to the Ocean's duo of Brad Pitt and George Clooney, the Coens comedy BURN AFTER READING became the directing pair's biggest opening film of all time generating $19.4 million on it's first weekend. It's also the first time they have ever bowed at No. 1 and marks Focus Features' biggest opening of all time which also coincided with their widest ever release.

BURN AFTER READING succeeded with mostly positive reviews, a very fun trailer with a fun plot and an increase in awareness of the directing duo after their NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN won the Best Picture Oscar last year. And of course, as we've mentioned, the pairing of Clooney & Pitt again. 1 Burn After Reading (2008) $19.4M $19.4M 2 The Family That Preys (2008) $18M $18M 3 Righteous Kill (2008) $16.5M $16.5M 4 The Women (2008/I) $10.1M $10.1M 5 The House Bunny (2008) $4.3M $42.2M 6 Tropic Thunder (2008) $4.18M $103M 7 The Dark Knight (2008) $4.01M $518M 8 Bangkok Dangerous (2008) $2.4M $12.5M 9 Traitor (2008) $2.13M $20.7M 10 Death Race (2008) $2.02M $33.2M So much for the long anticipated return of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro on screen. RIGHTEOUS KILL, a movie that looked so bad you wonder what projects the legends had turned down over the years to make it, finished in 3rd place! $16.5 million for the widest release of the weekend. It was certainly hampered by it's tough competition but for the movie to gross only slightly more than director Jon Avnet's last team-up with Pacino earlier this year with 88 MINUTES... it just shows you how much of a wasted opportunity this was. It has a long way to go to make back it's $60 million. The remake of George Cukor's THE WOMEN opened to a tame $10 million despite it's massive cast of popular female actresses including Meg Ryan, Eva Mendes, Bette Midler, Annette Benning, Debra Messing and Jada Pinkett Smith. Though surprisingly, they all agreed to work for cheap... the movie only cost $16 million (I guess there's no explosions or action scenes to deal with), so it may prove to be profitable yet for Picturehouse's last movie (it was formed between the now dead New Line and HBO). The Nicolas Cage thriller BANGKOK DANGEROUS dropped from FIRST place all the way down to EIGHTH, showing it's $10 million opening last week was probably just the die hard Cage fans. And TROPIC THUNDER ($103 million) and THE DARK KNIGHT ($518 million) continue to make money, the former becoming the 17th movie this year to cross the $100 million mark. source - coming soon