Weekend Box Office : ‘Girls’ Badder Than the Competition

In peak moviegoing periods, a $5-million gross for the weekend might be good enough for seventh or eighth place in the Top 10. But during a slow period, as now, $5 million is all it takes to be No. 1. And so “Bad Girls,” a tale of four prostitutes in the Old West, made it to the top in its opening weekend with a $5-million gross.

Besides “Bad Girls,” the weekend’s other new movies--”The Inkwell” from Disney’s Touchstone’s division, “Brainscan” from Triumph and “Chasers” from Warner Bros.--failed to make much of a commercial impression. “Chasers,” on 782 screens, only grossed $733,859.

* The Mexican-made romantic tale “Like Water for Chocolate” is poised to surpass the all-time box-office record for a foreign-language movie playing in the United States in the first week of May. The record was held by the 1969 Swedish-made soft-porn movie “I Am Curious Yellow,” which had a gross of $20.2 million.

Weekend Gross/ Screens/ Weeks in Movie (Studio) Total (millions) Average Release 1.”Bad Girls” $5 2,008 1 (20th Century Fox) $5 $2,496 2.”Four Weddings ...” $4.4 882 7 (Gramercy) $20 $4,966 3.”The Paper” $2.36 1,500 6 (Universal) $29.5 $1,575 4.”The Inkwell” $2.358 390 1 (Disney/Touchstone) $2.4 $6,049 5.”Cops & Robbersons” $2.351 1,836 2 (TriStar) $7 $1,281 6.”D2 The Mighty Ducks” $2.26 1,896 5 (Walt Disney) $37.4 $1,197 7.”Threesome” $1.82 1,215 3 (TriStar) $10.6 $1,504 8.”Major League II” $1.8 1,807 4 (Warner Bros.) $24.3 $997 9.”White Fang 2” $1.73 1,877 2 (Walt Disney) $5.1 $927 10.”Brainscan” $1.72 1,221 1 (Triumph) $1.72 $1,413 * “Like Water for Chocolate” $234,342 104 60 (Miramax) $20.1 $2,253

SOURCE: Exhibitor Relations Co.