Movie writers are calling John Travolta “the comeback king” after his latest feature, Swordfish, debuted at the top of the box office with $18.1 million, according to Exhibitor Relations. It marked the third-best showing for a Travolta movie (behind Face/Off and The General’s Daughter) and came after two back-to-back flops, Battlefield Earth and Lucky Numbers. The DreamWorks computer-animated feature Shrek held on to second place with $16.5 million, while Disney’s Pearl Harbor sank to third with $14.7 million. Analysts waiting to see whether Baz Luhrmann‘s Moulin Rouge would pick up business as the result of word-of-mouth got their answer: It didn’t. The frenetic musical wound up in sixth place with $7.6 million, mostly from tickets purchased by teenaged girls. Sales of the top 12 films totaled $94.8 million, up 2.8 percent from the same weekend a year ago.
The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Exhibitor Relations (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. Swordfish, Warner Bros., $18,145,632, (New); 2. Shrek, DreamWorks, $16,520,052, ($176,069,428); 3. Pearl Harbor, Disney, $14,721,419, ($143,987,500); 4. Evolution, DreamWorks, $13,408,351, (New); 5. The Animal, Sony, $9,607,627, ($35,651,090); 6. Moulin Rouge, 20th Century Fox, $7,649,148, ($27,569,224); 7. What’s the Worst that Could Happen?, MGM, $5,476,007, ($22,397,310); 8. The Mummy Returns, Universal, $4,700,130, ($188,749,560); 9. A Knight’s Tale, Sony, $1,702,336, ($52,660,994); 10. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Miramax, $1,145,298, ($67,350,448).
