‘Burn’ Takes Box Office Prize
The Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading captured the box office crown this weekend, netting the duo a record setting opening of $19,404,000 according to estimates from Box Office Mojo.
The top five slots were a mixed bag with Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys in second place with $18,020,000; the Al Pacino/Robert DeNiro drama Righteous Kill took $16,500,000 despite tepid reviews; and The Women nabbede $10,088,000 and mostly negative buzz with the comedy The House Bunny banking $4,300,000 (totaling $42,154,000).
After that, returning films were all up and down the charts as people turn their attention to more serious fare, the new television season and the local and national elections. As a result, holdovers such as Tropic Thunder, Death Race, Traitor, and the like were seeing 40-50% decreases in audience.
In the genre, The Dark Knight topped the list with an additional $4,015,000 boosting the total to $517,680,000 while the next top performers included Rogue’s Death Race lapped up another $2,017,000 and Vin Diesel’s Babylon A.D. banked just $1,770,000.
Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer is a new kind of movie hero and he’ll be making his home video debut after playing to a limited number of screens in the coming weeks before its DVD release from Anchor Bay on October 7 retailing for a mild-mannered $26.97
Updating two of this week’s stories, Michael Ausiello at 
Paramount Home Video has begun the Christmas shopping season with the announcement of Shrek the Halls coming to DVD on November 4. The CG-animated television special debuted last holiday season and featured a brand new story, cramming all the trilogy’s characters into a thirty minute event. It received good reviews and had an impressive audience averaging 22.7 million viewers.
Coming to stores next month, BBC Video offers a 19-disc Michael Palin Collection – on October 7, 2008.
Marc Guggenheim, Greg Berlanti and Michael Green are just about done with a rewrite to their Green Lantern 
feature film script and told 
Last of the Funnies is a new novelette from Mike Cope, a Canadian cartoonist. The 80-page book has garnered some positive comment with 
The Seven Samurai remains one of the classic storytelling devices invented for movies and has been the template for many films beginning with The Magnificent Seven. It has now also proven to be the inspiration for Doomsday Protocol, a science fiction thriller. The original script by Shane Salerno was purchased by 20th Century Fox for development.
Fear(s) of the Dark, an animated horror film from France, will receive a limited US release in October through December. The movie screened this past January at the 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam and garnered good reviews.
Katee Sackhoff will star in a new series created by Chris Levinson, Lost and Found for NBC according to 
