Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo’ #2 At Crowded Friday Box Office; Liam Neeson’s ‘Taken 2′ Still #1; ‘Sinister’ Tops Kevin James Family Comedy; ’7 Psychopaths’, ‘Atlas Shrugged 2′ Bomb

SATURDAY AM, 2ND UPDATE: Welcome to an incredibly crowded domestic box office with five films opening in wide release. And it’s not even a holiday weekend. I just don’t get the distribution crush, especially with so much sports on TV (college and NFL football, baseball playoffs). Nevertheless, expect another major-league grossing weekend: $120M which is up a whopping +45% from last year. Twentieth Century Fox’s popcorn action holdover Taken 2 (3,706 theaters) is an easy #1 for the second straight weekend with $23M. Following in #2 is yet another critically acclaimed and Oscar buzzed Ben Affleck R-rated film for Warner Bros. Argo (3,232 theaters) logged a rare ‘A+’ CinemaScore from audiences which should promote great word of mouth. Now the question is whether it can beat $20M this weekend. Affleck’s true story of the ‘Canadian Caper’ covert operation to rescue 6 Americans during the 1979-1980 Iran hostage crisis should have legs: the last caper film Affleck directed and starred, The Town, kept widening its audience week after week. Sony Animation’s blockbuster 3-week-old toon Hotel Transylvania (3,375 theaters) will scare up another strong weekend by holding -32% from a week ago. It’ll come in #3 for the weekend with $17+M. Summit Entertainment’s horror pic Sinister (2,527 theaters) started out better than expected with $1 million from Thursday’s late shows and Friday midnights in 1,494 locations. That puts the horror film on track to do a respectable $16M for 4th place by end of Sunday after going into this weekend as the top-selling film online ... Read More »

Source: http://www.deadline.com/2012/10/sinister-scares-up-1m-midnights-with-asterisk/

America Ferrera Amerie Amy Cobb Amy Smart Ana Beatriz Barros Ana Hickmann