The arty posters and print ads for both Flesh and Bone and Fearless took a quirky risk by picturing the films' respective stars, Meg Ryan and Jeff Bridges, with their backs to the cameras. And moviegoers responded to the two austere dramas by turning their backs: Flesh and Bone, a slice of dusty American gothic, opened to an unpromising $4.5 million, and Fearless, a study in survivor guilt, nose-dived as it expanded into national release. Bridges and Flesh's Dennis Quaid, though historically critics' darlings, failed to exercise the star muscle that ''opens a picture,'' making the studios the ones with their backs against the wall. Weekend Gross to Weeks in Gross* Top 20 Date Release 1 $7.7 Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas Touchstone, Animated $26.7 4 2 $4.5 Flesh and Bone Paramount, Dennis Quaid $4.5 1 3 $4.3 Robocop 3 Orion, Robert John Burke $4.3 1 , 4 $4.2 Cool Runnings Walt Disney, Leon $43.6 6 5 $4.1 The Beverly Hillbillies 20th Century Fox, Jim Varney $30.8 4 6 $4.0 Look Who's Talking Now TriStar, Kirstie Alley $4.0 1 7 $3.1 Rudy TriStar, Sean Astin $15.4 4 8 $3.0 Demolition Man Warner Bros., Sylvester Stallone. $50.0 5 9 $2.7 Malice Columbia, Alec Baldwin $40.4 6 10 $2.2 Fatal Instinct MGM, Armand Assante $6.9 2 11 $2.0 Fearless Warner Bros., Jeff Bridges $3.8 4 12 $1.8 The Joy Luck Club Hollywood, Tamlyn Tomita $24.3 9 13 $1.5 The Remains of the Day Columbia, Anthony Hopkins $1.5 1 14 $1.0 Gettysburg New Line, Jeff Daniels $5.9 5 15 $0.9 Sleepless in Seattle TriStar, Tom Hanks $121.9 20 16 $0.9 The Fugitive Warner Bros., Harrison Ford $177.4 14 17 $0.8 A Home Of Our Own Gramercy, Kathy Bates $0.8 1 18 $0.8 The Good Son 20th Century Fox, Macaulay Culkin $41.0 7 19 $0.7 A Bronx Tale Savoy, Robert De Niro $15.4 6 20 $0.6 Judgment Night Universal, Emilio Estevez $11.3 4
Weekend Per-Screen No. of Average Top 10 / Per Screen Screens 1 $16,266 The Remains of the Day Columbia 94 2 $4,599 Tim Burton's Nightmare Touchstone 1,671 3 $3,935 Gettysburg New Line 248 4 $3,764 Flesh and Bone Paramount 1,200 5 $3,028 The Joy Luck Club Hollywood 600 6 $2,635 Fearless Warner Bros. 749 7 $2,454 A Bronx Tale TriStar 304 8 $2,434 Cool Runnings Walt Disney 1,741 9 $2,397 Robocop 3 Orion. 1,796 10 $2,256 The Beverly Hillbillies 20th Century Fox 1,830
Souce: Exhibitor Relations Co.,Inc. *Weekend of Nov.5-7 (Dollar figures in millions) Drawn from 20 Top-Grossing Films
