‘Double’ Jeopardizes Other Weekend Debuts

“Double Jeopardy,” a tale of a woman wrongly imprisoned for her husband’s murder, killed the competition with $23.7 million in ticket sales to debut atop the weekend box office, according to estimates Sunday.

Last weekend’s top movie, the Martin Lawrence comedy “Blue Streak,” dropped to No. 2 with $13.2 million. The Bruce Willis ghost story “The Sixth Sense” remained at No. 3 in its eighth weekend with $8.5 million.

The weekend’s other major debuts opened weakly. The somber “Jakob the Liar,” starring Robin Williams as a widower who cheers up fellow Jewish ghetto residents with fake reports of Allied victories over the Nazis, was eighth with $2.2 million. “Mumford” was ninth with $2 million.

“Double Jeopardy” stars Ashley Judd as a woman out for revenge against her husband, who faked his own death and framed her for murder. Tommy Lee Jones co-stars as Judd’s parole officer.

The film takes its title from the legal precept that a defendant cannot be tried twice for the same crime. From the filmmaker’s loose interpretation, it means Judd already has been punished for her husband’s murder and now can hunt him down and kill him without consequences.

With a female lead and Jones essentially reprising his tracker role from “The Fugitive,” “Double Jeopardy” was a “date action movie that had appeal to both sexes,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Inc., which tracks movie ticket sales.

“Sixth Sense,” the summer’s box office surprise, has taken in $225.1 million and moved ahead of “Aladdin” as Disney’s second-highest grossing film behind “The Lion King,” which made $312 million. Edging past “Mrs. Doubtfire,” “Sixth Sense” also climbed into the top 20 all-time moneymakers.