24 Oct – "Taken 2" is taken two notches down to third place as scary caper film "Paranormal Activity 4" takes over top spot in U.S. box offices over the weekend (18 – 21 Oct), grossing a total of US$29 million. Meanwhile, "Argo" remained steadfast in second place, in spite of the praise it received. Despite its grand entrance to first spot on opening week, "Paranormal Activity 4" has slipped in grosses compared to its predecessors in the franchise. The found footage film picks up several years later after "Paranormal Activity 2", where Alex (Kathryn Newton) and her family begin to experience strange happenings when they take in the neighbour's child Robbie. Last but not least is "Taken 2" in third place. On the other hand, newly released movie "Alex Cross" starring Tyler Perry also debuted this week, but comes in at a disappointing fifth place, marking it as the lowest opening gross for an Alex Cross movie. Previous instalments include "Kiss The Girls" and "Along Came A Spider", which starred Morgan Freeman as the titular character for both movies.
Aside from "Paranormal Activity 4", there was another scary movie that took top spot, which is Scott Derickson's "Sinister", in Malaysia's box office. Starring Ethan Hawke as true-crime novelist Ellison Oswalt, who tries to revive his career by moving into a house where its previous tenants were murdered in order to conduct research for his new book, only to discover a box of mysterious snuff films that leads his family to be terrorised by an unknown entity. As a result, last week's first and second placers "Taken 2" and "Maattraan" each move a step back to fill in second and third places respectively.
"Taken 2" starring Liam Neeson, continued to perch on the top spot at the Singapore box office. This time round, Neeson's Bryan Mills and his wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) gets taken while his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) takes a turn in rescuing her parents instead. While "Sinister" played out strong to the Malaysian audience in its first week, its third week in Singapore sees the movie in third spot, unflinching in its position from last week while "Looper" remained in second.
For Malaysia, new movies that opened last week were "Ted", "Vajram", "The Fierce Wife Final Episode", "Imperfect", "PE3", "Thiruthani" and "Student Of The Year".
For Singapore, new movies that opened last week were "The Dinosaur Project", "Naruto Movie: Road to Ninja", "End Of Watch", "Hit And Run", "Soar Into The Sun", "Student Of The Year" and "Fairy Tail Movie: Priestess Of The Phoenix".