Vampire Flick Takes $16M Bite Out of Box Office

Vampire-seekers made 30 Days of Night number 1 this weekend amid pale box office numbers, Variety reports. Other new entrants couldn’t top Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, The Game Plan, or Michael Clayton, which took second, third, and fourth, respectively. The AP reports that audiences want “something to have fun with,” says one insider.

Ben Affleck made his directing debut with Gone Baby Gone, which ran a tight race for fifth with lowbrow sports spoof, The Comebacks. Coming in seventh was crime thriller We Own the Night. Proof that fans want escapist fare was Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas in Disney Digital 3-D, which nabbed eighth and cracked a fab $9,122 average on just 564 screens. (More movie premiere stories.)