Paranormal 3 is Metafantastic

The third in the series of low-budget spook sonatas woke up the sleepy autumn box office with the best-ever opening for an October film

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Paramount Pictures

In Paranormal Activity 3, creepy stuff mostly happens when people are sleeping. But the movie, third in the series of low-budget spook sonatas about two sisters beset by ghosts and other demons, woke up the somnolent autumn box office with $54 million at North American theaters, according to preliminary studio reports, for the biggest October opening ever. PA3 also broke the usual jinx of the third episode in a horror series: it improved on the opening of PA2, by 33%. And with its subtle shivers instead of gross-out gore, the movie attracted mostly women.

[UPDATE: In “actual” figures posted late Monday by Box Office Mojo, PA3 earned $52.6 million, or about 3% less than the original estimate. The runners-up. Real Steel and Footloose, each finished about $500,000 below their Sunday numbers. The “actuals” for all other films in the top 10 were close to their preliminary forecasts.]

Its weekend take was the loftiest since early August, when Rise of the Planet of the Apes earned $54.8 million. One big difference: the simian smash cost $93 million to produce, PA3 about $5 million. The new movie was already in the black after its Thursday midnight shows, where it scared up $8 million. That was nearly as much as another new movie, a $90-million remake of The Three Musketeers, earned for the whole weekend—and more than twice the take of the third debut film, Rowan Atkinson’s Johnny English Reborn, at $3.8 million.

(MORE: Richard Corliss reviews Paranormal Activity 3)

Any studio has to like the Paranormal math. The first movie was made for $15,000—repeat: thousand—by Israeli-born Oren Peli in a week in his own house four years ago. (Steven Spielberg screened the picture, freaked out and urged Paramount to distribute it.) Released in a clever pseudo-viral campaign in 2009, PA1 earned $107.9 million domestic and $193.4 million worldwide, making it the all-time most profitable horror film.

And unlike the previous title-holder The Blair Witch Project (nearly $250 million worldwide gross on a $60,000 budget), Paranormal spawned a gigantic franchise. Last year’s sequel, shot for $3 million, gleaned another $84.7 million at home, $177.5 million abroad. A worldwide double-take of $371 million, for movies that cost little more than the drivers’ fees on a standard Hollywood epic, guarantees that sequels will be ornamenting the multiplex pumpkin patch for years to come. PA also challenged the franchise that had dominated Halloween for much of the past decade and became the new champ. It came, it conquered Saw.

(MORE: The Paranormal Phenomenon)

The only subnormal aspect of the Paranormal success story is the new film’s rating from the CinemaScore research group, which canvases moviegoers who’ve seen a new movie and asks them to grade their response. The survey is meant to measure word-of-mouth, an important factor in the extension of any picture’s shelf life. PA3 got a severe C-plus, which suggests that audiences were lured into theaters by the advertising but hated themselves in the lobby. A C-plus CinemaScore often accompanies movies (Let Me In and Your Highness, for example) that simply don’t connect with the public. but other C-pluses, like Rango and Bad Teacher, hung around in theaters and earned healthy mulltiples of their first-weekend gross. We’d expect PA3 to drop off, as most horror movies do, but tiptoe up to the $100-million mark, say “Boo!” and make it jump.

The other two big new films—which earned decent CinemaScores of B, but attracted few paying customers—were essentially European imports. The Three Musketeers, something like the 30th film version of the novel by Alexandre Dumas père (the best ones: Douglas Fairbanks’ silent swashbuckler in 1921 and Richard Lester’s puckish adaptation in 1974), has earned $64.4 million in foreign climes but won’t come near that here. Director Paul Anderson’s retread, starring his wife Mila Jovovich, finished behind Footloose, now in its second week, and Real Steel in its third.

As for Johnny English Reborn, it’s further proof that Rowan Atkinson is a luminary abroad who can’t get arrested in the States (unlike, say, Dominique Strauss-Kahn). Atkinson has developed three beloved comic personae: Blackadder, whose trot through five centuries of English history made him a Europe-wide TV star but only an intermittent presence on PBS; the wordless, bumbling Mr. Bean, whose two film features took in $400 million abroad but just $79 million here; and Johnny the international spy, whose pair of movies have earned nearly $240 million elsewhere, $30 million here. It’s said that all comedy is local; Hollywood comedies that America loves (e.g., Wedding Crashers) may earn no more than 30% of their total earnings on all other continents. But Atkinson’s imaginative farces are popular nearly everywhere but here. Put that conundrum in the Go Figure column.

(MORE: Mary Pols reviews Marcy Mary May Marlene)

On the indie subcontinent, Marcy Mary May Marlene, limning the travails of an escapee from a religious cult, opened to a beatific $137,541 in four theaters. Being Elmo, a doc about Muppeteer Kevin Clash, scored a felt-good $25,158 at one Manhattan theater. And the insider-trading drama Margin Call lucked into all the Occupy Wall Street coverage to earn $582,400 on 56 screen screens in 20 cities. Among holdover art films, the black-Irish comedy The Guard, starring Don Cheadle and Brendan Gleeson, is just $18,000 short of the $5-million milestone in its 13th week; and Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain passed $7.5 million in its seventh. The comedy concert film, produced for just $750,000, has quickly earned 10 times its budget. If those aren’t quite Paranormal numbers, they’re certainly way above par.

(MORE: Mary Pols reviews Margin Call}

Here are the Sunday estimates of this weekend’s top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by Box Office Mojo:

1. Paranormal Activity 3, $54 million, first weekend

2. Real Steel, $11.3 million; $67.2 million, third week

3. Footloose, $10.85 million; $30.9 million, second week

4. The Three Musketeers, $8.8 million, first weekend

5. The Ides of March, $4.9 million; $29.2 million, third week

6. Dolphin Tale, $4.2 million; $64.4 million, fifth week

7. Moneyball, $4.05 million; $63.7 million, fifth week

8. Johnny English Reborn, $3.8 million, first weekend

9. The Thing, $3.1 million; $14.1 million, second week

10. 50/50, $2.8 million; $28.8 million, fourth week