‘Red October’ Pulls in a Lot of Green

Despite the presence of the heavily hyped “Blue Steel” and the dueling lambada movies, the weekend box office was again dominated by Paramount’s “The Hunt for Red October” and--among limited releases--by a pair of nuns on the run.

In the No. 1 spot for the third week, “Red October” torpedoed the box office for another $11 million. This brings to $54 million the receipts for the film adaptation of Tom Clancy’s best-selling novel about a renegade Soviet submarine commander--played by Sean Connery--who heads his “first strike” vessel toward the United States.

With an estimated $7.1 million in ticket sales, Warner’s “Joe Versus the Volcano” claimed the No. 2 spot. Starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, the romantic comedy has now earned about $16 million.

In third place, despite savage reviews, was Columbia’s remake of “The Lord of the Flies.” The updating of William Golding’s classic novel about schoolboys marooned on an island had ticket sales of about $4.3 million.

With receipts of about $3.6 million, New Line’s teen comedy, “House Party,” claimed fourth place. Its grosses are now an estimated $8 million.

In fifth place--despite a plethora of magazine covers boasting star Jamie Lee Curtis--was MGM/UA’s cop thriller, “Blue Steel,” with ticket sales of only about $3 million.

On the lambada front: Warner’s “Lambada” had ticket sales of approximately $2 million on 1,117 screens for a weak eighth-place ranking and a paltry per-screen average of about $1,790. Its competitor, Columbia’s “The Forbidden Dance,” had ticket sales of about $900,000 at 637 screens, for an even more dismal per-screen average of about $1,412.