Friday Report: ‘Knowing’ Tops ‘I Love You, Man’ and ‘Duplicity’
On Friday, Knowing arrived with an estimated $8.9 million on approximately 4,300 screens at 3,332 sites, handily leading the box office. In a single day, the supernatural thriller featuring Nicolas Cage out-grossed the first weekend of another Cage future-seeing thriller Next, and its initial attendance was on par with The Forgotten and Deja Vu among comparable titles. If Knowing follows the paths of those movies, it would wind up with a $24 million-plus opening weekend.

In second, I Love You, Man attracted an estimated $6.3 million on around 3,400 screens at 2,711 sites, landing smack-dab in the middle of the first days of similar comedies Role Models and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Those pictures' opening weekends came in at $19.2 million and $17.7 million, respectively.

Duplicity uncovered an estimated $4.7 million on close to 2,900 screens at 2,574 sites, ranking third. Attendance for the romantic caper's first day was slightly less than Intolerable Cruelty and Matchstick Men among past titles. If its pattern is the same, Duplicity's weekend would hit $14-15 million.

Down 44 percent to an estimated $3.8 million, Race to Witch Mountain's second Friday was lower than The Game Plan's (Disney's previous Dwayne "Dwayne Johnson" Johnson vehicle), but its eight-day tally of $35.5 million was higher due to many kids being off school during the week for spring and semester break.

Rounding out the Top Five, Watchmen continued to fizzle, dropping 62 percent to an estimated $2 million for $93.4 million in 15 days. It was one of the sharpest declines for a third Friday for a superhero movie and nearly as much as Hulk at the same point. While Watchmen's theater count was down slightly to 3,510, its screen count took a bigger hit: from approximately 7,100 screens last Friday to around 4,700 screens.

Grossing nearly $2 million, The Last House on the Left fell 65 percent, which was steeper than The Hills Have Eyes but about the same as The Hills Have Eyes 2. Taken was down 33 percent to under $1.4 million, pushing its total to over $130 million in 50 days. No other picture topped $1 million on Friday.

Meanwhile, Coraline had the best hold among nationwide releases. The stop-motion animated feature made $630,000 or nearly as much as it did last Friday, despite losing 20 percent of its screens.

Related Chart

• Grosses for Friday, Mar. 20