Weekend box office: Burn after viewing

Call it the calm during the storm: While parts of the country were fleeing Ike and others were just getting drenched, not many people took refuge in the movie theaters. Actually, poisonous reviews and general bad buzz surrounding "The Women" may have sent audiences fleeing the other direction. Of the four new releases, Diane English's all-star remake of the vastly superior 1939 classic came in last, with a shockingly minor $10 million at almost 3,000 theaters. Where's that much-vaunted female first-weekend audience now? The lessons of "Sex and the City" and "Mamma Mia!" may be that it'll show up when the property is a known and loved quantity like a cable TV series or a cheesy Swedish sing-a-long hit but not when it's based on a 70-year-old movie.

"Burn After Reading" debuted with $19 million at 2,600 theaters, by far the biggest opening weekend haul for a Coen brothers to date. It's hard to compare this with their last outing, "No Country For Old Men," since that got a slow roll-out starting in big-city arthouse markets (the movie ultimately grossed $74 million, quite good given its darkness, violence, and non-closure). No surprise: "Burn," a lesser movie than "No Country," got a bounce from the earlier film's Oscars and acclaim. Brad Pitt being in it didn't exactly hurt, either.

Coming in at No. 2 was "Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys" with $18 million at 2,000 theaters -- and the highest per-screen-average of the week for a major release. That's a core audience and a well-served one, no matter that the rest of the world knows an overwritten soap opera when it sees one.

Then came "Righteous Kill," with DeNiro and Pacino -- oh, how the mighty have fallen -- at $16.5 million, followed by "The Women". Actually, the single most-watched item this weekend may have been the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler = Sarah Palin/Hillary Clinton dust-up on Saturday Night Live. Probably the best-written, too.

More numbers at Box Office Mojo and Movie City News.