‘Amityville Horror’ scares up a crowd

There appears to be money in ghosts, or at least in movies about ghosts -- even in tales told twice, thrice or more. MGM’s “The Amityville Horror” scared up an estimated $23.3 million over the weekend to take the lead in box office receipts, the studio reported Sunday.

The re-imagined version of a more than 30-year-old story that previously spawned a bestseller and a movie (plus various sequels) is fourth among the top-grossing horror movies released since October, according to box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co.

Those four films, led by “The Grudge” with an opening weekend tally of $39.1 million, all have had to do with ghosts or ghostly goings-on. Two of the four are remakes, and “The Ring Two” ($72.8 million and counting after a $35.1-million opening weekend in March) is a sequel to a remake. Just ahead of “Amityville” is the high-tech spook show “White Noise” (not a remake or sequel but arguably unoriginal), which took in a total of $55.9 million after an initial weekend gross of $24.1 million in January.

As was the case with “The Grudge” and the “Ring” films, the audience for “Amityville” was mostly young and more female than male, MGM said.

“Young girls over the last five or six years have been the stalwarts of horror,” Erik Lomis, MGM’s distribution president, said Sunday. Informal exit surveys indicated that moviegoers for “Amityville” were 56% female and that nearly two-thirds of the overall audience was 25 and under. Breaking it down a bit further, Lomis said 37% were “young females,” ages 17 to 25, “assuming the film’s R rating prevented most younger teens from seeing the movie.”

“I don’t know what changed,” Lomis said, “but young girls really seem to like” horror movies. “Maybe it’s because there are more female heroines.”

Scarier than the movies, perhaps, is the continuing slump at the box office. The weekend was the second in a row that all films together took in less than $90 million, according to another tracking firm, Nielsen EDI.

Last week’s top two movies held up relatively well, with “Sahara” and “Fever Pitch” dropping 27% and 29%, respectively. “Sahara” grossed an estimated $13.1 million, bringing its 10-day total to $36.4 million. “Fever Pitch” took in about $8.8 million, for a 10-day figure of $23.9 million.

Among films in limited release, Stephen Chow’s “Kung Fu Hustle” stirred up an additional $264,043 in seven theaters, Sony Pictures Classics reported, for a solid per-theater average of $37,720. Its real test will come Friday, when it opens nationwide in about 2,300 theaters.

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Box Office

Preliminary results (in millions) based on studio projections.

*--* Movie 3-day gross Total The Amityville Horror $23.3 $23.3

Sahara 13.1 36.4

Fever Pitch 8.8 23.9

Sin City 6.7 61.3

Guess Who 4.9 57.6

Beauty Shop 3.8 31.3

Robots 3.6 115.7

Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous 2.9 41.6

The Pacifier 2.4 103.7

The Upside of Anger 1.9 15

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Source: Nielsen EDI Inc.

Los Angeles Times