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A Breath of Life for Horror at the Box Office as the Contagion Sweeps Through!



After a dismaying spell of financial failures, horror has found new life at the box office. In what comes as a bit of surprise to many pundits (do the research, plenty “analytic specialists” predicted a kamikaze debut for the Matt Damon led outbreak feature), the genre has found a stable foothold in the form of Contagion.

Well, Matt, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, scribe Scott Z. Burns and director Steven Soderbergh just proved the know-it-alls (I myself held heavy doubts in regards to the film’s potential reception) wrong. Contagion hit 3,200 theaters and pulled down a respectable $23 million in ticket sales. $23 million isn’t historically monumental, but on this past weekend, it was enough to shatter the competition.

To put it into better perspective, take this into account: The Help placed second at the box office top 10, and it earned just $8.6 million. That’s not a bad take for a film that’s been released wide for five weeks, and already earned more than $100 million, but there’s an obviously gnificant gap between the first and second potions.

Plenty of horror cluttered the remaining potions of the top 10, but none drew any noteworthy numbers. Rise of the Planet of the Apes hung tight at xth place; Shark Night 3d fell to seventh; Apollo 18 plummeted to the eighth slot. Not all too impresve, save for our weekend debut, the “supposed-to-fail” chiller, Contagion.

Check out the full box office top 10 below:

1. Contagion: $23 million 2. The Help: $8.6 million 3. Warrior: $5.6 million 4. The Debt: $4.9 million 5. Colombiana: $4 million 6. Rise of the Planet of the Apes: $3.8 million 7. Shark Night 3D: $3.5 million 8. Apollo 18: $2.9 million 9. Our Idiot Brother: $2.7 million 10. Spy Kids: All the Time in the World: $2.5 million
Matt_Molgaard Monday 9/12/2011 at 02:44 AM | 82478