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From BOM:

'Town' Takes Crown

September 18, 2010

On Friday, The Town was the talk of the box office, Easy A received some attention, Devil wasn't elevated, and Alpha and Omega was a dog. Overall business was a bit higher than the same Friday last year when Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs debuted.

The Town hauled in an estimated $8.4 million on approximately 3,500 screens at 2,861 locations, earning the comparison its marketing made to The Departed. The latter blazed onto the scene with $8.7 million on around 4,200 screens at 3,017 locations nearly four years ago (though its attendance was about 25 percent greater than The Town's). Like Departed, The Town busted out of its genre norm, grossing more in one day than Gone Baby Gone and Pride & Glory did in their entire first weekends and more than doubling the opening day of We Own the Night. If The Town follows a similar pattern to those movies, its opening weekend would come in close to $25 million.

In second, Easy A aced its first day with an estimated $6.8 million on close to 3,500 screens at 2,856 locations. That was about as much as Jennifer's Body made Friday-through-Sunday on the same weekend last year, and it blew away the openings of many other comparable titles, including Youth in Revolt, Whip It and Sydney White. It also edged out The House Bunny, John Tucker Must Die and 10 Things I Hate About You. In other words, Easy A was above average but not in the league of Mean Girls and Superbad among others.

True to its pedestrian title, Devil delivered an average estimated $4.9 million on nearly 3,300 screens at 2,809 locations. Its start was a bit less than Quarantine, One Missed Call and The Eye, but a bit more than Mirrors, Stay Alive and Dark Water among other horror movies.

Alpha and Omega picked up a meager estimated $2.3 million on around 3,000 screens at 2,625 locations. More than 1,600 locations presented the animated feature in the 3D illusion, and they accounted for nearly 70 percent of the gross.

Resident Evil: Afterlife had a Friday-to-Friday fall in line with its predecessors. The horror action sequel tumbled 72 percent to an estimated $3 million, around 75 percent of which from 3D presentations. The Friday-to-Friday drops of the previous movies were, in chronological order, 69 percent, 71 percent and 75 percent. Despite having the highest gross through the eight-day point ($36.9 million), Afterlife continued to be the least-attended entry in the series.

Inception saw the smallest decline among nationwide holdovers, easing 28 percent to an estimated $595,000. Its total stands at $283.8 million in 64 days.

from Box Office
Early Weekend Estimates (Domestic)

The Town $24,000,000 $24,000,000
Easy A $19,000,000 $19,000,000
Devil $12,600,000 $12,600,000
Resident Evil: Afterlife $9,700,000 $43,591,366
Alpha and Omega $8,500,000 $8,500,000
Takers $3,000,000 $52,346,064
The American $2,900,000 $32,999,954
The Other Guys $2,000,000 $115,431,394
Inception $1,900,000 $285,062,718
Eat Pray Love $1,800,000 $77,785,804

Some interesting notes - Easy A had an $8m budget, The Town was $37m.

The Mark Romanek directed adaptation of Never Let Me Go pulled $121,000 from 4 theaters for a $30,250 average.

Machete don't do second weekends

Wow, Inception is still in the top 10.

It's quite sad that Devil didn't do any better. But seeing the budget is $10 million, it should do fine.

to The Town.

Why have I not even heard of three of those movies?

I think it's sad that Devil did any business whatsoever.

Good on The Town.

Devil isn't that bad. It's an enjoyable PG-13 horror film, so I can state that much. Regardless of how much it does at the box office, MRC will go ahead on getting the second Night Chronicles film out ASAP. The film cost $10 million to produce and they sold it to Universal for $27 million. Universal may not distribute the second one due to "poor" box office performance, but I'm sure another studio will if they pass.

I gotta admit...I've never seen a trailer for Alpha and Omega...wtf is it?

/\ Animated movie from Lionsgate

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Nice take for The Town.

Does horror have to be rated R or something?

Have you even seen Devil? No, so I find it laughable that you're against a film you haven't seen.

The horror genre is dead right now. Both PG-13 and R rated horror movies suck and I find is hilarious that you think an R rated horror film is automatically better than a PG-13 horror film. I'm sure you've all heard it before, The Ring, The Grudge, The Others, Drag Me to Hell. Those were great PG-13 horror films.

Easy there li'l tiger...

Mod warning: whether intended or not, or even as a (poor) attempt at humor, threats of violence against other posters is a violation of the rules around here.

It's also pretty childish.

I saw this on opening night.

Read the book instead.

The story itself was well done and it was certainly thought provoking and even haunting at times... but the film didn't take it's time to flesh out the characters. The movie is a quick 1 hr 45 mins. If they added about 30 minutes of just character development it would have been much more emotional.

If you're not a reader then wait for the DVD.

None of those really excelled at storytelling (save for the Exorcist, which has otherwise dated terribly), imho, but they were able to create and sustain atmosphere and mood with a real threat of violence. But you also listed nearly 40 years worth of horror films there. Recent R-rated horrors have largely been terrible.

Haha alright, talk to you in 14 years or so -- granted PG-13 makes it that long and there isn't some asinine redefinition of movie ratings before then -- though it may take a few extra years to catch up with R (which is currently 42). I actually liked The Ring and the more-goofy-than-creepy Drag me to Hell more than the Dawn of the Dead remake which, outside of a solid setup and credit sequence was pretty shitty. Hell, I'd take Poltergeist over that.

On a side note, Devil scored a C+ cinemascore which is pretty lousy (with Cinemascore, a B is pretty bad), sets it up for a pretty big slide next weekend.

Sure, but I don't see why someone calling Devil enjoyable PG-13 horror is that hilarious to you.

Based on trailers, reviews, ads, I'm against every Hollywood release these days and I'll be happy to trash them all, DEVIL included, without seeing them. So feel free to laugh all you want. At least someone's having a good time.

Nah, because Devil is hardly even an M. Night film since he didn't direct it or even write the screenplay for it.

Sorry. I'll keep my cool next time.

The reactions from the audience have been highly positive. That's the point. It's an original horror film that had no studio interference and the directors and writer got complete creative control on the project. It's kinda obvious that it isn't your usual Hollywood piece that gets ruined by studio interference.

Coincidentally, it's the poor word of mouth that is going to kill this movie next weekend.

Maybe the studio should have interfered.