DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox's R rated adult appeal drama Road to Perdition, a Zanuck Company production, opened in second place to critical acclaim, an early Oscar buzz and a heavenly ESTIMATED $22.11 million at 1,797 theaters ($12,305 per theater).

Perdition's average per theater was the highest for any film playing in wide release this weekend.

Directed by Sam Mendes, it stars Tom Hanks, Paul Newman and Jude Law.

"It's outstanding," DreamWorks distribution head Jim Tharp said Sunday morning. "The nature of this kind of movie is to play strong Sunday and mid-week. With the adult audience, they don't always turn out the first weekend to see a movie. Many times they wait for the word of mouth and show up in subsequent weeks.

"The idea of going out initially with the 1,797 runs was to allow the movie to play well through the summer and into the fall. And I think this release pattern allows that."

Recalling DreamWorks' 1998 summer blockbuster Saving Private Ryan, Tharp noted that it opened to an average of $12,414 per theater with 2,463 runs. Ryan arrived to $30.58 million the weekend of July 24-26, 1998 and wound up grossing $216.1 million in domestic theaters. "On a per theater basis, (this) is about the same and it's in fewer theaters," Tharp said.

Asked about talk that Perdition is on the road to the Oscars, Tharp replied, "We're aware of all of that. It's not something we're addressing at this point. We're trying to maximize the box office of the movie with our marketing and release pattern."

On the distribution side, DreamWorks plans to go a little wider with the film this week. "We actually had conversations with (exhibitors) last week, many (of whom had) wanted to open the movie," Tharp said. "So we'll add a few hundred runs this coming Friday. But, again, we're still restraining ourselves from really blowing the movie out and taking what we think is an inappropriate number of runs."

As for those who questioned whether it made sense to release a film targeted to adults in mid-summer, Tharp observed, "Well I think (this strong opening) does counter that. I think a good movie can play any time of the year. This kind of movie that plays really well on Sundays and mid-week is even stronger in the summer than it is any other time of the year. So for the total box office for the movie, we think the summer was a perfect time to release it."

Looking at the first exit poll information coming in Sunday morning, Tharp said DreamWorks was told, "Audiences for Road to Perdition were evenly divided by gender and evenly split under and over 35. The movie played substantially above average in the excellent, very good and definite recommend categories."