Puss In Boots tops US box office

Despite lacking the titular S-word of its predecessors, Dreamworks Animation’s Puss In Boots still performed strongly on its opening weekend, with a $34 million take putting it top of the US box office.

Despite making less than half the money Shrek the Fourth made on its respective opening, Puss In Boots now holds the record for biggest Halloween weekend opening of all time, narrowly edging out Saw 3 on $33.6 million.

Paranormal Activity 3 was the lone flier of the horror movie flag this Halloween, its $18.5 million take putting it in second spot. The found-footage chiller was closely followed by Justin Timberlake’s sci-fi flick In Time , which made $12 million on its opening weekend.

The Footloose remake added a further $5.4 million to the pot in fourth place, whilst Johnny Depp endured a disappointing reaction to labour of love The Rum Diary , which opened to just $5 million. Shawn Levy’s Real Steel slumped somewhat to sixth place, only managing to add $4.7 million to its overall gross.

Meanwhile, the crash-bang-wallop extravaganza of The Three Musketeers continued to perform woefully below expectations, with a paltry $3.5 million weekend dragging its overall gross to $14.8 million. “Poor marketing”, cried star Milla Jovovich. “Poor film”, cried everyone else. That said, it was still more than was managed by some of the more cerebral fare on offer, with The Ides Of March and Moneyball bringing in just $2.7 and $2.4 million respectively.

Christian saga Courageous rounded off the top ten with a $1.8 million haul, completing a relatively slow weekend across the board. Next week sees a comedy face-off between Tower Heist and, er, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas . Look forward to that one…