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Also driving the post-July Fourth weekend were high impact arrivals for Dimension Films' Scary Movie 2 and 20th Century Fox's Kiss of the Dragon and very encouraging sneaks for MGM's Legally Blonde.

The PG rated family appeal comedy Cats and Dogs from Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment, combining live action with animation and special effects, captured first place with a purr-fectly beautiful ESTIMATED $21.6 million at 3,040 theaters ($7,240 per theater). Its cume after five days is approximately $35.7 million.

Cats opened Wednesday (July Fourth) with a slim lead over the holiday's other new wide release, the R rated Scary Movie 2 from Miramax's Dimension Films label. Both films benefited from widespread rain across the United States on July Fourth with Cats doing $9.02 million and Scary Movie 2scaring up $8.75 million. On Thursday, July 5 Scary Movie 2 took in $5.26 million while Cats grossed $5.03 million.

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

"The great thing about Cats and Dogs is that it's been playing so well for family audiences," Warner Bros. Distribution president Dan Fellman said Sunday morning. "We're going to be around for a long time. You know, with all the movies coming in, there's really nothing for the young kids."

Focusing on Cats' first five days business, Fellman noted, "This gross beats the first seven days of Space Jam, which grossed $32 million for the week. That's been our largest Warner family film in our company's history. That went on to do $90 million (in domestic theaters). Just trying to look at something similar, Stuart Little, it grossed $27 million its whole first week. That went on to do $139 million (domestically). So I think we have a really good chance of exceeding the $100 million mark since we had such a great start.

"I assume we're going to do at least $40 million for the first week. And we have all this summer play time. We opened Space Jam at Thanksgiving so it didn't have the benefit of having a Saturday every single day (the way summer releases do)."

Dimension Films launched its R rated horror film spoof sequel Scary Movie 2 in second place with a killer ESTIMATED $21.0 million at 3,220 theaters ($6,521 per theater). Its cume after five days is approximately $34.5 million.

Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, it stars Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Chris Masterson and Kathleen Robertson.

The original Scary Movie opened last July 9 to $42.35 million at 2,912 theaters ($14,542 per theater). It cost about $19 million to produce and went on to gross about $157 million in domestic theaters.

"We're very happy with the opening," Miramax senior vice president, marketing David Kaminow said Sunday morning. "It's good enough that Bob (Weinstein, co-chairman of Miramax and head of the Dimension label) this morning is already talking about, maybe, another sequel. With this kind of opening we might see Scary Movie 3.

"Scary Movie 2 is poised to be the third highest week in the history of the company (after) Scary Movie and Scream 3. Obviously, from that we're very, very happy from a corporate standpoint. With $34.5 million in five days -- the budget was in the mid-$40 millions roughly -- we're in really good shape here."

Who was on hand this weekend? "Demographically it was pretty even male-female," Kaminow replied. "African-American audiences are really responding very, very well to the film. We think the play there is going to be long. And 18 to 24 is the solid core group, (which) is not surprising. The African-American (exit) scores were above average -- the Top Two Boxes in the 80 percents and the Definite Recommend in the low 80 percents as well, which is a great place to be.