'Monsters' Tops Box Office
Nov. 5 -- Pixar Animation Studios' Monsters, Inc. dramatically outperformed already-high expectations, winning the weekend box office race with a $63.4 million haul that shattered all sorts of records.
It's the biggest opening ever for a movie released by Walt Disney (trumping Pearl Harbor's $59 million bow in May), and the biggest November opening ever — a more impressive feat than it sounds, since it made that money without the benefit of a holiday (Walt Disney is the parent company of ABCNEWS.com).
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is sure to open huge in two weeks, but it's about an hour longer than Monsters, Inc. — which means less shows per day, a factor that might keep it from trumping Monsters' enormous debut. If word of mouth proves strong, Monsters has a good shot at winning the race next weekend as well, when the only new wide releases are director David Mamet's crime drama Heist and the latest Farrelly Bros. gross-out comedy, Shallow Hal.
In second place, martial artist Jet Li quietly joined the club of Asian actors who can open movies, as his sci-fi drama The One posted a decent showing. John Travolta's drawing power seems to be in remission again, if the weak third-place debut of Domestic Disturbance is anything to go by. Monsters' huge opening notwithstanding, it was a pretty typical weekend, with the holdovers from previous weeks dropping off fairly predictably.
Andrew Johnston is a film critic and associate editor at US WEEKLY magazine.
Related Stories
ABC News Live