#1 – Gravity   $55.5 million dollars    I     Warner Brothers Pictures.

North-American Audiences over the weekend of October 4-6th, 2013 once again gave into actor George Clooney’s sly charismatic charm and overall cool character persona against their better judgement of his filmography, and flocked to Cinematic space this weekend to the tune of Gravity’s 55.5 million haul.

Top billed by arguably one of the few solidly bankable actresses in hollywood (Sandra Bullock) and featuring the ambitious return of popular independent arthouse filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron making his first feature film in 7 years, Gravity from the get go had an eye-catching trailer that caused audiences to ask themselves “How are they gonna stretch that out for 90 minutes?”. Debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival (tiff) to glowing reviews, with a film that promised to be a visual marvel and an impressive technical feat, Warner Bros. got behind marketing an original sci-fi picture as the first big event film of the fall season that demanded to be seen on the biggest screen possible (IMAX and 3D). That effort boasted the biggest opening gross ever for the Fall movie season, the highest opening for lead each actor’s film careers, and a higher 3D share than AVATAR. It seems that audiences are finally understanding when to go 3D.

For its day to day performance the film brought in 17 million on opening night, then spiked to 23 million on Saturday (a sign of the film’s adult appeal), and finished off the weekend with 14 million and change. I saw the movie myself on Sunday and I can honest say it is one of, if not the best films mainstream audiences will see in theatres this year. All signs point  to good word of mouth and long term performance all the way to oscar night, and a healthy take home for everyone.

–William out.

*figures, like all other movie sites are directly lifted from Box Office Mojo