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In a weekend marked by surprisingly large percentage declines across the board, Swordfish outperformed expectations. The Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow film flew much higher on Hollywood's radar screen than insiders had anticipated.

Overall, key films grossed about $94 million, down sharply by over 22% from last week and up only a marginal 1.4% from last year. Insiders attributed the hefty percentage declines this weekend to a number of possible factors, including competition from televised basketball and hockey playoffs, widespread good weather and a concentration of high school proms.

"It was interesting to see the number of graduations and proms that actually fell on this weekend while normally they're spread out a little," one top distributor pointed out. "I think people were tied up with a lot of family events this weekend. The weather back East was fantastic. And you had the NBA game on Friday and again today and you had the final game of the hockey playoffs, Game Seven, on Saturday. It was just a combination of things. Never is there one thing -- unless it's the Super Bowl -- that impacts the business like this. And that's just a one day thing.

"To give you an idea, on Friday of the pictures in the marketplace already, other than the two new pictures (that opened), all the pictures were off 47 percent (on average) on Friday night and off 51 percent (on average) on Saturday. That's way out of line from the norms. Most of the time you don't see one weekend dive so much from, like, the first weekend in June to the second weekend in June."

Nonetheless, the weekend saw Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures' R rated action drama Swordfish made a big first place splash with a tasty ESTIMATED $18.43 million at 2,678 theaters ($6,882 per theater).

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

Directed by Dominic Sena and produced by Joel Silver and Jonathan Krane, it stars John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and Don Cheadle.

Reflecting on how well Swordfish kicked off, Warner Bros. Distribution president Dan Fellman said Sunday morning, "You have to just take a look at the demographics out there. All these movies were going after different audiences than ours. No question about it, the tracking once again proves that it doesn't always work. We came through. We're very, very happy about it. Now we're focusing on our second week."

Considering the competition from televised sports and a marketplace crowded with other films -- including DreamWorks' blockbuster Shrek, which many observers were predicting would move up from second place to capture top honors this weekend -- Fellman noted, "I think we beat the odds. We won the weekend certainly despite the NBA finals, which certainly hurt the box office on Friday and will again on Sunday."

Audience reaction, he added, "was really terrific. Our exits were great. The audience was 56% male and 44% female and they liked the movie equally, so that's very nice. This is the seventh motion picture in a row produced byJoel Silver that opened Number One in the marketplace.

"The studio's thrilled. It's nice to be in the John Travolta business when he's hot. We had a great cast (besides Travoltawith) Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and Don Cheadle. These guys did a good job. And Dominic Sena made a good movie. And, of course, we have our production partners Village Roadshow in this movie, who deserve a tip of the hat."

Swordfish, Fellman said, "is John's third largest opening in his career. Face/Off is his biggest opening at $23.3 million. The General's Daughter is his second biggest at $22.3 million. Michael did $17 million, so this comes in (third). If you look at the (marketplace) for those movies in those days, there wasn't the enormous amount of competition the same weeks. They were generally free of competition. So (with Swordfish doing so well with a lot of competition now), it shows some strength for the movie."

As to where Swordfish might be heading, Fellman said it's too early to say at this point: "I think you need to sit back a little and digest the next weekend before we make predictions. We're off and running. It's a great opening for Warner Bros. and our summer. Our next movie is A.I. from Steven Spielberg and then we have also a terrific movie on July Fourth called Cats & Dogs.

"We're looking forward to a huge year and, of course, with Harry Potter (in November) and Oceans 11 (in December) and Majestic at Christmas and Collateral Damage (in October) and Training Day (in September), we're in good shape."