Acclaimed Iran hostage thriller Argo brought home its first box-office win over a quiet weekend, leading film charts with €9.6 million in US and Canadian ticket sales as would-be moviegoers hunkered down for Hurricane Sandy.
Skyfall whipped up a storm of its own overseas, taking €60.1 million in 25 countries
The tally for Argo, directed by and starring Ben Affleck, topped the €7.2 million for new sci-fi drama Cloud Atlas. Halloween-themed animated film Hotel Transylvania scared up €7.3 million from Friday through Sunday, narrowly edging Cloud Atlas, studio estimates showed.
After two weeks in the no. 2 spot, Argo moved into the lead and lifted its domestic sales to €47 million through three weekends.
The film, produced by Warner Bros and GK Films for €34 million, tells the story of a mission to rescue US Government employees from Iran in 1979. The film has earned Oscar buzz after stellar reviews from critics and an “A+” grade from audiences polled by CinemaScore.
Dan Fellman, president of theatrical distribution for Warner Bros, a unit of Time Warner Inc., attributed the film’s jump to “great word-of-mouth”, which he called “the best form of advertising”.
Cloud Atlas, also from Warner Bros, fell short of industry forecasts for a €10 million debut at North American (US and Canadian) theatres. Fellman said the film did better in larger cities but struggled in the south and midwest.
The film, starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, cost €77.4 million to make.
Based on a philosophical novel by David Mitchell, the nearly three-hour film divided critics with the harshest reviewers saying it would try audiences’ patience with multiple storylines and century-hopping plots.
The film’s stars also shift characters. Hanks, for example, is a shady doctor in the 1840s, a nuclear scientist in the 1970s and a simple valley-dweller in the distant future.
But Cloud Atlas also drew praise as an ambitious and well-acted epic. Sixty-one per cent of reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes website recommended the film.
Hotel Transylvania set a record for a September film opening in North America when it opened on September 28, and has performed solidly since then.
This weekend was fairly quiet at the box office in North America, which Dergarabedian attributed to Hurricane Sandy, a storm menacing the East Coast of the US.
However, the new James Bond movie Skyfall whipped up a storm of its own overseas, taking €60.1 million in 25 countries.
The latest instalment of the British spy saga took the top spot in all 25 countries, broke the all-time Saturday attendance record in the UK, and was the biggest film opening there of 2012. It will open in the US on November 9.
Rounding out the weekend’s top five, low-budget horror sequel Paranormal Activity 4 grossed €6.7 million at domestic theatres. Silent Hill: Revelation 3D and Taken 2 tied for fifth place, each pulling in €6.1 million.
Two other new films failed to crack the top five.