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Sweet success at the box office
18/07/2005 10:23 - (SA)
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| Actor Johnny Depp promotes his new movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, at Claridges Hotel in London. (Ian West, AP)
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Los Angeles - Willy Wonka gave movie-goers their sugar fix for the weekend.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, starring Johnny Depp as candyman Wonka, had a sweet debut of $55.4m (about R366m), helping Hollywood make a dent in a box-office downturn that has lingered most of the year.
Opening as a solid No 2 was Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn's comedy Wedding Crashers, which took in $32.2m, according to studio estimates on Sunday.
The two new movies bumped the previous weekend's No 1 flick, Fantastic Four, which slipped to third place with $22.7m, lifting its 10-day total to $100.1m.
Ticket sales soaring
Overall business was up solidly, the second-straight weekend Hollywood revenues rose after a slump that had lasted since late February.
After a slight uptick at the box office the previous weekend, the top 12 movies took in $151.4m, a rise of 7.5% from the same weekend last year, when I, Robot premiered as the No 1 movie.
"People are just waiting for the right kinds of movies to come along, and they will show up in big numbers," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
Director Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is the second adaptation of Roald Dahl's beloved children's book, following Gene Wilder's 1971 version Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Critics, fans give movie thumbs up
For Depp, whose earlier collaborations with Burton include Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood, Charlie marked his biggest opening ever, surpassing the $46.6m debut for his 2003 blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
The movie received high marks from critics for Burton's fanciful visuals and Depp's quirky rendition of the anti-social Wonka, backed by a roster that includes Freddie Highmore, Helena Bonham Carter, Noah Taylor and James Fox.
While Charlie and the Chocolate Factory locked up the family audience, the R-rated Wedding Crashers gave adult crowds a dose of raunchier humour. The movie stars Wilson and Vaughn as men who crash strangers' weddings to pick up women.
Distributor New Line had briefly mulled whether to tone the movie down to a PG-13 rating, but test audiences gave the racy film a thumbs up, said Russell Schwartz, the studio's head of marketing.
"There's been such a move toward more sanitised movies, so I think the R rating actually helped," Schwartz said. "It's a movie that wears the R on its sleeve very proudly."
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at North American theaters, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, $55.4m
2. Wedding Crashers, $32.2m
3. Fantastic Four, $22.7m
4. War of the Worlds, $15m
5. Batman Begins, $5.6m
6. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, $5.05m
7. Dark Water, $4.4m
8. Herbie: Fully Loaded, $3.4m
9. Bewitched, $2.4m
10. Madagascar, $2.1m
- AP
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