Maybe it was because the movie’s theme struck a chord in these desperate days, maybe it was just because Tom Cruise spazzed out doing promotion all over the place, but it’s worked. War Of The Worlds has resoundingly topped the US weekend box office chart.

Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds, starring Tom Cruise has taken more than $77 million at the box office – a huge amount, but still not enough to stop the movie slump. Why? The big film this time last year was Spiderman 2 – the eighth-biggest movie of all time.

Despite the Tom Cruise mental theatrics leading up to the release of
the film, including an Oprah freakout, proposing to his girlfriend at
the top of the Eiffel Tower, getting squirted in the face and
denouncing modern medicine, War Of The Worlds is his strongest-ever
opening for a movie.

But how did all the other movies do? Here’s the weekend US movie box office chart…

1) War Of The Worlds (Aliens invade, Tom Cruise sneezes on them, they die) $77,600,000

2) Batman Begins (Batman takes drugs and sees a fire-breathing horse) $18,685,000

3) Mr & Mrs Smith (Brad Pitt kicks Angelina Jolie’s head in over the course of two hours) $12,700,000

4) Bewitched (Nicole Kidman wiggles her nose but still can’t make Will Ferrell funny) $10,800,000

5) Herbie: Fully Loaded (Lindsay Lohan’s last film before she vanishes into dust) $10,508,000

6) Madagascar (Cartoon animals eat each other in the jungle) $7,000,000

7) Rebound (Martin Lawrence fails to be funny again) $6,000,000

Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge Of The Sith (Natalie Portman dead? Noooooooooooooo!) $5,000,000

9) The Longest Yard (Note to Adam Sandler – you are not Burt Reynolds) $3,525,000

10) George A. Romero’s Land Of The Dead (Like Last Of The Summer
Wine, but without a man in a barrel rolling down a hill) $3,244,000

[story by Stuart Heritage]