The last live-action hit for the one-time superstar and Shrek donkey was Norbit in 2007 ($95.7 million) his 2008 Meet Dave and 2009 Imagine That earned less than $30 million between them. The Tower Heist take also disappointed those who were trumpeting Murphy’s return to box-office magnet status. (MORE: Read Mary Pols’ review of Tower Heist) Produced for $85 million, and pegged to earn at least $30 million in its first three days, the movie opened at $25.1 million, which is just a smidge higher than the $23.8 million earned by last autumn’s grittier heist film, the R-rated The Town. It was the most anticlimactic vault opening since Geraldo Rivera unlocked Al Capone’s safe. The smart money of Internet prognosticators had been on Tower Heist as a kind of Ocean’s Eleven caper with a boost from the hate-Wall-Street Zeitgeist. The $75.5 million that the film has earned in 10 days would seem to validate that plan but do note that Megamind, in its first 10 days, had taken in $88.8 million, or about 18% more than the little ginger cat. But the studio’s marketing boss Ann Globe told The Wrap that DreamWorks had always planned a two-weekend opening strategy for Puss. DreamWorks Animation often releases its autumn features the first weekend of Nov., like last year’s Megamind. The movie dropped only 3% ($1 million) from last weekend’s opening, when it had to fight off a Word Series game 7 on Friday and a freakish October snowstorm on the East Coast Saturday. Give Puss props for holding on tenaciously in its second frame. (MORE: Read Richard Corliss’ review of Puss in Boots) In fact, virtually the entire fall season has been foul, and the low numbers for the year’s first Christmas film must put moguls in a Grinchy mood about their vaunted year-end releases. If Hollywood were to commission a holiday number sung by Bing Crosby, with Yanni on the keyboards, it would be: “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas - in Greece.” Then again, the weekend as a whole was off 25% from 2010’s first weekend in Nov., when the top three films ( Megamind, Due Date and For Colored Girls) earned $98.2 million to the $71.1 million amassed by Puss, Tower and H&K. In the process Puss humiliated the weekend’s other new comedy, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, third in the Asian-American dopester series, which sniffed out a mild $13 million. But Puss confounded all forecasts and pulled off his own heist. The DreamWorks animation spinoff of the Shrek franchise, with Antonio Banderas voicing the flirtatious feline felon, was expected to lose to newcomer Tower Heist, pairing Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy as high-rise employees planning to rob a Bernie Madoff type (Alan Alda) of his ill-gotten zillions. Puss in Boots stayed atop the hot tin roof of the North American box office, winning the weekend with $33 million, according to preliminary studio estimates.
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