Moviegoers continued to keep their eyes on the Peeping Tom thriller "Disturbia," which fended off a weak batch of newcomers to remain No. 1 for the third straight weekend with $9.1 million.
The top-12 movies took in an anemic $62.9 million, down 30 percent from the same weekend last year, when "RV" was the No. 1 movie with $16.
4 million. Business seemed to be on hold in anticipation of a huge summer that will begin with Sony's "Spider-Man 3." DreamWorks and Paramount's "Disturbia," starring Shia LaBeouf as a housebound teen whose surveillance of neighbors uncovers a killer, raised the film's total to $52.
2 million after three weekends, according to studio estimates. Disney's supernatural thriller "The Invisible" turned in the best performance among the weekend's ho-hum debuts, taking in $7.6 million to open at No.
2. The movie centers on a teen trying to solve his own murder while trapped in a nether zone between life and death. Paramount's "Next," starring Nicolas Cage as a man whose ability to see into the future is exploited by federal agents trying to stop a terrorist nuclear attack, premiered at No.
3 with $7.2 million. Lionsgate's "The Condemned," with wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin
Yari Film Group's comedy "Kickin' It Old Skool," starring Jamie Kennedy as a man who wakes from a 20-year coma and tries to revive his break-dancing career, opened at No. 11 with $2.8 million.
Though movie attendance is up 1.2 percent so far this year from the same period of 2006, Hollywood has been in a lull in recent weeks as a huge crop of summer films looms, including the "Spider-Man 3" debut set for Friday, to be followed closely to the box office by DreamWorks Animation's "Shrek the Third" and Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End." "I think people are just absolutely ready for a big summer movie," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony.
"You can see by the box office over the last few weekends they're ready, and it's been a long time coming. I do anticipate it's going to be an incredible weekend for us." "Spider-Man" took in $114.
8 million in its first weekend in 2002, a three-day opening that remained an all-time high until "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" set a new record last summer with $132 million. In 2004, "Spider-Man 2" opened on a Wednesday before a long four-day Fourth of July weekend and took in a record $180.1 million in its first six days.
"This was an incredibly slow weekend. To have a top movie come in under $10 million just shows how the marketplace is in a holding pattern," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers. "It'll all be made up next weekend with `Spider-Man 3.
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