20th Century Fox's 'The Simpsons Movie' trounced the competition for No. 1 spot with a $71.8 million North American weekend.
20th Century Fox's 'The Simpsons Movie' trounced the competition for No. 1 spot with a $71.8 million North American weekend. © Solarpix / PR Photos
A whopper haul of $30 million on Friday from 3,922 North American theaters made the animated movie the King of summer blockbusters so far.
Overseas, The Simpsons Movie is also No. 1 by a big margin with an average 55% market share. Debuting in only 8 of the top 15 markets: UK, Germany, France, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Australia and Argentina, it registered the biggest industry opening day ever in Australia, Argentina, Columbia and Chile; and biggest animated opening day ever in Australia, Belgium, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Peru, Sweden, Uruguay, Venezuela.
Fox's heavy saturation of marketing and interviews with Simpsons' showrunner Al Jean and voices of Simpsons' (Bart, Nelson Muntz,and more) Nancy Cartwright on NPR, Homer opening this week's Tonight Show and earlier American Idol and a 7-Eleven cross-promotion combined with outsourcing much of the animation work to Korea to keep down costs, has made this 75 million dollar film a home run.
The No. 2 movie, 'I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry' stayed strong and made $19 million this weekend from 3,501 venues.
'Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix' scored a big Saturday and jumped up to No. 3 its 3rd weekend - taking in $17.6 million.
New Line's 'Hairspray' dropped to No. 4 and took in $15.4 million.
DreamWorks and Paramount '"Transformers' added another $11.5 million its 4th weekend in release.
Warner's 'No Reservations,' starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, opened 6th with $12 mil this weekend from 2,425 runs.
'Ratatouille' made $7.4 million from 2,934 theaters.
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