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For the last two Halloweens, Jigsaw hasn't given us much of a puzzle at the box office. Saw III easily coasts to victory this weekend.

Saw III

The latest entry in the very successful horror franchise appears to have bucked the trend that other horror sequels The Grudge 2 and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning ran in to, at least for one day. With a Friday take of $14.1 million, that's an uptick from the $12.1 million earned on opening night one year ago, and a mere $4 million less than the entire first weekend of 2004's first entry (which also came on this weekend). This is a very solid opening number, blowing away everything else in the top ten. Saw II checked in with a weekend multiplier of 2.61 on its way to a $31.7 million weekend, and taking 2.6 and applying it to Saw III would give us a fantastic $36.6 million weekend.

Running With Scissors

With Catch a Fire missing the top ten, the only thing left to mention is that with an expansion to 586 theaters, Running With Scissors sneaks into the top ten with Friday earnings of $812,000, the highest per-screen average of the top ten movies not called Saw. Look for a weekend of about $2.7 million and some more expansion in the coming weeks.

Notable Holdovers

It really wasn't all that good a second Friday for any of last weekend's new releases. The Prestige drops 42.1%, Flags of Our Fathers falls 45.2%, Flicka dips 43.6% and Marie Antoinette slips 54.1%. The first three might bounce back over the rest of the weekend, but it's really bad news for the last one. Figure around $10 million for The Prestige, $6.5 million for Flags of our Fathers (which really hurts its Academy Awards status), about $5 million for Flicka and $2.6 million for Marie Antoinette in weekend number two.

Projected Estimates for the Top Ten (Three-Day)
Projected Rank	Film	Estimated Gross
1	Saw III	36.6
2	The Prestige	9.9
3	The Departed	9.9
4	Flags of Our Fathers	6.5
5	Open Season	5.6
6	Flicka	5.0
7	Man of the Year	4.4
8	The Grudge 2	3.5
9	Running With Scissors	2.7
10	Marie Antoinette	2.6