| 'Scooby Doo' snacks on $56 million at box office Sunday June 16 2:55 PM ET LOS ANGELES (Rueters) - Zoinks!! "Scooby-Doo" was no dog at the North American box office. In one of the biggest surprises of a red-hot summer movie season, the feature version of the vintage cartoon TV series bow-wowed at No. 1 with a $56.4 million weekend haul, according to studio estimates issued Sunday. The producers of the Warner Bros. release said they would have been happy with an opening in the mid-$30 million range. "Scooby-Doo" ranks as the biggest June opener in history, surpassing the three-year-old record of "Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" ($54.9 million). It is also the third biggest opening of 2002, behing "Spider-Man" ($114.8 million) and "Star Wars: Episode ll: Attack of the Clones" ($80 million). The film, headlined by Freddie Prinze Jr., his fiancee Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Mathew Lillard, cost about $80 million to make, with a quarter of that spent on the computer-animated titular pooch. The Ben Affleck nuclear thriller "The Sum of All Fears" (Paramount), which had ruled the box office the last two weekends, slipped to No.4 with $13.5 million for the Friday-to-Sunday period. It's 17-day total is $84.5 million. In between, were two other debuts, both delayed by almost a year. The Matt Damon spy thriller "The Bourne Identity" (Universal) opened at No.2 with a strapping $27.5 million; and Nicolas Cage's WWll drama "Windtalkers" (MGM) earned a disappointing $14.5 million, the latest in a string of flops at billionaire Kirk Kerkorian's studio. "Bourne" reportedly cost $60 million and "Windtalkers" upwards of $120 million. BOFFO BOX OFFICE On the plus side, "Scooby-Doo" propelled the box office to its strongest level in four weeks. The top 12 films grossed $160 million, up to 55 percent from last weekend, and up 25 percent from the year-ago weekend, according to tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. Warner Bros. distribution president Dan Fellman said industrywide year-to-date sales were up 25 percent from last year, and the box office was on track to reach 410 billion this year, up from 2001's record $9 billion. Fellman's studio, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc., accounted for 43 percent of this weekend's receipts, with assists from "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" at No.5 ($9.8 million) and "Insomnia" at No.11 ($3.7 million). A "Scooby-Doo" sequel is in the works for 2004, said Fellman; producer Charles Roven, who developed the project through his Mosaic Media banner, said he was still waiting for an official announcement from the studio. The movie's appeal is multi-generational, said Roven, who noted that the Hanna-Barbera stoner classic has enjoyed a virtually uninterrupted run on TV over three decades. While Prinze has said its attraction boils down to a talking dog, Roven said it goes deeper than that: audiences can relate to its "scared heroes" as they solve paranormal mysteries. Raja Gosnell directed the film, which also starred Linda Cardelini. BACK TO NEWS ARCHIVE BACK HOME |
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| The cast of Warner Bros' "Scooby-Doo" |