“Takers” slips past devil’s clutches, takes the bank

It came down to the wire, but “Takers” nosed “The Last Exorcism” this weekend by a couple hundred thousand dollars. Both films were able to take advantage of the slow “can it please just be fall already” weekend, with “Takers” surprising the most, at least in my estimation.

The $20.5 million for “Takers” goes to show what a few high-profile musicians names and a typical but fan-favorite heist premise can do for a film plagued and delayed by many a thing, including Chris Brown’s “incident.” It was enough to end the late August trend of horror movies topping the box office, but barely.

1. Takers – $20.5 M (weekend) … $20.5 M (gross)
2. The Last Exorcism – $20.3 M … $20.3 M
3. The Expendables – $9.5 M  … $82 M
4. Eat Pray Love – $6.8 M … $60.5 M
5. The Other Guys – $6.2 M … $99 M
6. Vampires Suck – $5.2 M … $27.8 M
7. Inception – $4.8 M … $270.5 M
8. Nanny McPhee Returns – $4.7 M … $16.9 M
9. The Switch – $4.5 M … $16.4 M
10. Piranha 3D – $4.3 M … $18.2 M

Of the five films that came back for a second weekend, only a couple did well. The films of earlier in the month all stayed in the top five instead of bowing down to any of those films. “Lottery Ticket” for example nose-dived out of the top ten from a little over $10 million last week to $3.8 million this week. “Vampires Suck” fell from second place to sixth and “Piranha 3D” went from sixth to tenth. Only “Nanny McPhee Returns” and “The Switch” in that group held up respectably this past weekend.

Elsewhere, the re-release special edition of “Avatar” just missed the list earning $4 million in 812 theaters nation-wide. A solid per-theater average, but nothing amazingly impressive.