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Hollywood had braced for an animated catfight between Fox's Anastasia and Disney's The Little Mermaid. But Mortal Kombat Annihilation -- a sequel to a movie based on a videogame -- won the title bout, and, with the help of a lot of little boys uninterested in either the Russian princess or the piscine swimmer, grabbed the top spot with a $16.8 million bow (its predecessor opened at $23.3 million). Still, at more than $14 million, Anastasia boasted the best opening ever for a non-Disney animated family feature. Among adult moviegoers, the battle of the best-sellers climaxed in a relative stalemate: Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker collected $10.6 million in 2,317 theaters; Clint Eastwood's movie version of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil pulled down about half as much but, playing on just 824 screens, had a larger per-screen average.
NO. OF WEEKEND WEEKS GROSS WEEKEND SCREENS PER-SCREEN IN TO TOP 20 GROSS* [**] AVERAGE RELEASE DATE*
1 MORTAL KOMBAT ANNIHILATION New Line $16.8 2,140 $7,837 1 $16.8 2 ANASTASIA 20th Century Fox $14.1 2,478 $5,692 2 $14.2 3 JOHN GRISHAM'S THE RAINMAKER Paramount $10.6 2,317 $4,586 1 $10.6 4 THE JACKAL Universal $9.0 2,201 $4,100 2 $28.6 5 THE LITTLE MERMAID Walt Disney $5.7 2,057 $2,765 2 $102.3 6 MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL Warner Bros. $5.2 824 $6,352 1 $5.2 7 STARSHIP TROOPERS TriStar $4.7 2,822 $1,668 3 $46.3 8 BEAN Gramercy $4.3 1,991 $2,154 6 $37.4 9 THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE Warner Bros. $2.9 2,039 $1,441 2 $8.6 10 I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER Columbia $2.6 1,860 $1,388 6 $63.8 11 THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE Warner Bros. $2.2 1,763 $1,271 6 $53.7 12 EVE'S BAYOU Trimark $1.6 652 $2,403 3 $9.1 13 THE WINGS OF THE DOVE Miramax $1.3 259 $5,041 3 $2.7 14 BOOGIE NIGHTS New Line $1.2 748 $1,664 7 $20.3 15 RED CORNER MGM $0.8 1,229 $661 4 $20.8 16 THE FULL MONTY Fox Searchlight $0.8 431 $1,864 15 $31.3 17 THE ICE STORM Fox Searchlight $0.7 217 $3,120 9 $4.4 18 KISS THE GIRLS Paramount $0.6 771 $819 8 $58.2 19 MEN IN BLACK Columbia $0.6 605 $923 21 $248.4 20 ONE NIGHT STAND New Line $0.5 407 $1,277 2 $1.8
SOURCE: EXHIBITOR RELATIONS CO. INC. WEEKEND OF NOV. 21-23 *WEEKEND GROSS AND GROSS-TO-DATE FIGURES IN MILLIONS [**] INCLUDES SOME MULTISCREEN THEATERS AND PRINTS SHIPPED AS WELL AS INDIVIDUAL SCREENS
