Paranormal Activity 3 Tops US Weekend B-O

OCT 24, 2011 - Blame it on the Halloween season, but Paranormal Activity 3 proved there's definitely still a lot of life left in the franchise by opening to an estimated US$54 million this weekend. Besides marking a significant improvement over Paranormal Activity 2's US$40.7 million, it also topped last year's Jackass 3-D to claim a new record for highest Fall opening ever (September and October). Paranormal Activity 3 also bested its predecessor to take the top opening ever for a pure horror movie.

Unfortunately, newbies The Three Musketeers, Johnny English Reborn and The Mighty Macs all missed modest targets, and as a result the weekend fell a bit short of the same frame last year.

Here are the Top 5 North American B-O studio estimates for Oct 21-23, 2011 weekend, in terms of rank, (previous week ranking), Movie name (studio), Weekend takings in USD, (Cumulative gross, USD) and week on chart, courtesy of Boxofficemojo. (US$1=RM3)

1. (-) Paranormal Activity 3 (Paramount) $54,020,000 ($54,020,000) 1

2. (1) Real Steel (BV) $11,319,000 ($67,226,640) 3

3. (2) Footloose (Paramount) $10,850,000 ($30,863,031) 2

4. (-) The Three Musketeers (Summit) $8,800,000 ($8,800,000) 1

5. (4) The Ides of March (Sony) $4,900,000 ($29,159,326) 3