Oren Peli is two-for-two at Paramount.
With the filmmaker working on a bountiful $3 million budget this time, his follow-up "Paranormal Activity 2" enjoyed the best opening for a horror film of all time, grossing an estimated $41.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend, according to studio data.
The previous best genre mark was set in February 2009, when Warner's remake of "Friday the 13th" opened to $40.6 million. ("Paranormal 2" still has to stand the scrutiny of Monday's clearer-headed final box-office tallies before it officially receives the mark.)
The sequel (or prequel, depending on how you take it) to Peli's 2009 viral phenomenon "Paranormal Activity" also grossed $22 million while opening in 21 foreign territories this weekend.
The movie received a B grade from movie customer-satisfaction research firm Cinemascore.
The performance dispelled notions that Paramount would succumb to the dreaded "Blair Witch" curse, in which a studio with a breakout viral-marketing horror hit stumbles with its bigger-budgeted follow-up.
"I don’t think we want 'Paranormal' mentioned in the same breath with 'Blair Witch,' but on flip side, it is always in the back of your mind to make sure you don’t go down that path," noted Paramount distribution G.M. Don Harris.
On a weekend in which the domestic box office finished 13 percent ahead of the same frame in 2009, only one other film went wide on the release calendar, with Warner's Clint Eastwood-directed "Hereafter" floundering to a $12 million fourth-place finish.
Here's a look at how the top 10 finished. Report continues below chart:
Finishing in second place despite a 57 percent week-to-week drop-off was Paramount's "Jackass 3D," which previously delivered the studio another whopping over-performance ($50 million last weekend).
With "Paranormal 2" drawing an audience that was 54 percent female, Paramount officials said they didn't think the horror movie would siphon too many young moviegoers away from the third "Jackass," which grossed $21.6 million in its second weekend.
But with 64 percent of "Paranormal's' audience under the age of 25, some cannibalization was inevitable.
In the end, however, Harris said that Paramount was dead-set on releasing "Parnormal 2" on the same weekend-before-Halloween that marked the apex of the original viral phenomena's run.
Last year, on this same weekend, Peli's $15,000 homemade original won the box office with $21.1 million, on the way to a $193.4 million worldwide take.
Finishing third this weekend, meanwhile, Summit's "Red" dropped only 31 percent from its opening to $15 million, bringing the older-skewing action-comedy ensemble to $43.5 million after two weeks.
Summit spent $58 million to make the film, which stars Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Helen Mirren. However, with foreign pre-sales, company officials say their exposure is only around $20 million, rendering their biggest expenditure outside the "Twilight" movies a success.
In fourth place, the $50 million afterlife-themed "Hereafter" marks the second consecutive middling collaboration between director Eastwood and star Matt Damon, who last year combined to render Warner's Apartheid-based sports movie "Invictus."
This time around, Warner decided for a platform-release strategy for "Hereafter," which debuted in six locations last weekend.
But it doesn't seem to have helped. Just like "Invictus," a $60 million movie that only went on to gross $122.2 million globally, "Hereafter" has just over $12 million to show for itself after two weeks of release.
Noted one rival-studio executive in regard to Eastwood: "It's awfully hard for an 80-year-old filmmaker to be making movies for an under-25 audience."
Ouch.
But perhaps the bigger zingers should be directed toward Damon, who hasn't had a film he's appeared in open to more than $15 million since 2007's "The Bourne Ultimatum."
In fact, "Hereafter" comes seven months after Damon starred in the Paul Greengrass-directed "Green Zone," a $100 million action movie that floundered to a $95 million global performance.
In fifth place, Sony continues to drive "The Social Network" after nearly a month of release, with the David Fincher-directed Facebook-founder's biopic declining only 31 percent to $7.3 million.
And in sixth place, Disney's "Secretariat" continues to make up for a slow start, dropping only 26 percent in its third weekend to $6.9 million.
Shot for $38 million, the sports movie has grossed $37.4 million domestically to date.
But the big story at the domestic box office remained "Paranormal Activity 2," which also rendered a not-too-shabby 67 percent score on movie-review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes.
"I think that's a staggeringly high number for a prequel to a low-budget horror movie," noted Harris, who also took the opportunity to give a special shout-out to Paramount production chief Adam Goodman. (It was Goodman who championed Peli's original videocam-made effort and also shepherded the follow-up.)
"I think Adam and his crew were very careful to make sure they handled this new movie properly," Harris added.
