THE VILLAGE Reigns SUPREME

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Sunday, August 1st 2004 at 3:13 AM

I haven't made a habit of writing news section based on weekend box-office numbers but I felt that may be something that needs to change as anticipation has outweighed poor reviews with The Village taking the top spot in the weekend box office estimates followed by The Bourne Supremacy and Denzel's Manchurian Candidate.

Whereas M. Night Shyamlan's Signs made $227+ million and The Sixth Sense made $293+ million The Village stepped up to an opening weekend of an estimated $50.8 million putting it extremely close to its modest budget of $60 million, and well on its way to imitating Shyamalan's earlier successes. Question remains, will word of mouth hurt or help The Village next weekend? A weekend that sees Tom Cruise back on the big screen in Collateral.

Following behind The Village in the number two spot is Matt Damon's Bourne Supremacy at about $23.4 million, which overcame newcomer The Manchurian Candidate starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep as it pulled in an estimated $20.2 million.

Rounding out the top five are two of the summer's action spectaculars I, Robot ($10.0 mil.) and Spider-Man 2 ($8.5 mil.). Spider-Man 2 has now just shy of $350 million domestically placing it at the number 10 spot all-time, just as Shrek 2 has now surpassed Phantom Menace into the number 4 spot all-time.

The biggest disappointment of the week has got to be the dismal numbers Universal Pictures Thunderbirds turned with a weekend estimate of only $2.6 million. The film was budgeted at $57 million, which is going to make its uphill climb to breaking even a lot tougher.

Get the rest of the weekend estimates here and stay tuned for the box-office final expected in Monday afternoon.

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