‘Blade’ Bumps ‘Private Ryan’ From Top Perch

A warrior of a different stripe emerged victorious in the box-office wars over the weekend as “Blade” the vampire slayer shot down the reigning champ, “Saving Private Ryan,” for a sanguine estimate of $17 million in its first three days of release.

“Blade,” on 2,322 screens, was the only survivor in an otherwise undistinguished battle for attention as three other new film recruits were seriously wounded in their first tour of duty. The quirky youth comedy “Dead Man on Campus” was lagging with about $4.7 million in 1,797 theaters, sharing the younger audience with “Dance With Me,” starring Vanessa L. Williams. On 1,467 screens, “Dance” had little life in its step with an estimated $4.5 million. Neither is expected to survive past the end of the summer. As for the spoof “Wrongfully Accused,” like “BASEketball” several weeks ago, it barely registered a guffaw on the comedy radar screen, earning only an estimated $3.4 million in 2,062 theaters, a 12th-place finish.

Though it got off to a better start than Miramax’s “Halloween H20” ($16.2 million), New Line’s “Blade,” which stars Wesley Snipes, didn’t reach the lofty levels of the company’s two other previous August action releases, “Mortal Kombat” ($23 million) and “Spawn” ($21 million). Neither of those films was rated R, though, says New Line senior executive Al Shapiro. And because of its more restrictive rating, the company didn’t expect “Blade” even to reach $17 million. Even more encouraging for its long-term prospects, according to Shapiro, was that the young audience in attendance was diverse and no more urban than suburban. “It played as well in Kansas as it did in Chicago,” Shapiro says.

As the season winds down and schools in various parts of the country reopen, summer movie mania is abating. The top 12 films grossed $75 million, down about 15% from last week, but 8% above the comparable weekend last year. The summer total so far is already at the level of last year’s record-breaking $2.2 billion, with two weekends to go, including the Labor Day holiday.

After enjoying four straight weeks at the top, “Saving Private Ryan” continues to be the must-see movie of the summer, luring nontraditional moviegoers in the same way that “Titanic” did earlier this year. In its fifth weekend, the film took in an estimated $10.1 million in 2,671 houses, sustaining its normal casualty rate of less than 25% from week to week. With about $143 million to date, “Ryan” now is the summer’s second-biggest gun behind “Armageddon,” which has brought in $185 million in two months, about $2.8 million of that during its eighth weekend.

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The other amazing performer of the late summer has been “There’s Something About Mary,” which topped $100 million in its sixth weekend, losing only 10% of its business from the previous weekend, grossing an estimated $7.9 million. Clearly a repeat-audience phenomenon, “Mary” climbed to third place this weekend, the highest that the gross-out comedy has ever ranked, apparently with plenty of naughty life left in her. Now at $104 million, “Mary” became the ninth film to cross into nine-figure territory for the summer.

The suspense film “Snake Eyes,” with about $5.1 million in 2,642 theaters over its third weekend, registered another substantial decline (40%) and has raked in a little more than $40 million so far. “Snake Eyes” came in right behind “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” which also had a discouraging loss in attendance (42%) from its debut weekend, indicating an inability to expand beyond its core African American female audience. “Stella” grossed about $6.6 million in 1,398 theaters for $22.3 million in 10 days. “Stella’s” legs are no match for Drew Barrymore’s. The fantasy romance “Ever After” has emerged as another summer sleeper, opening modestly and maintaining marvelously--$4.5 million in its fourth weekend in 1,867 theaters, for a total of more than $42 million in just one month.

Ninth place was nabbed by “The Parent Trap” with an estimated $3.8 million for the weekend in 2,169 theaters, helping it to just crack the $51-million mark. Both “Halloween H20” and, especially, “The Avengers” fell apart this past weekend. The “Halloween” sequel declined a frightening 56% in its third weekend, to $3.7 million in 2,360 theaters and an accumulated gross of $47 million in three weekends. “The Avengers,” meanwhile, has bomb written all over it as first-weekend patrons quickly spread the word, resulting in a catastrophic second-weekend decline of 66%, to $3.5 million, and a 10-day total of less than $18 million, slipping Emma Peel and John Steed out of the top 10 entirely.

Among the weekend’s limited-release debuts, the misanthropic “Your Friends & Neighbors” scored a direct, specialized hit with $329,716 on 32 big-city screens and a five-day total of $371,623. “Next Stop Wonderland” benefited from good reviews to register $120,000 in eight houses in New York, Los Angeles and Boston.