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Disney's clean-cut "High School Musical 3: Senior Year" kept would-be porn stars Zack and Miri at bay to keep its top slot on the North American box office earnings list, industry figures showed Sunday.
The preteen-targeting sing-along earned 15 million dollars in weekend ticket sales -- paltry for the top earner, in a weekend that saw the overall box-office gross down 38 percent from the same weekend last year, according to data compiled by Exhibitor Relations.
It bested the uncomfortably-named "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," a raunchy slacker comedy in which financially strapped friends played by Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks decide to make a do-it-yourself pornographic film but end up falling in love. The film debuted in second spot with 10.7 million dollars.
The latest horror franchise "Saw V" slipped one spot to third, scaring up 10.1 million dollars on the Halloween weekend, while the latest Angelina Jolie vehicle "Changeling," Clint Eastwood's drama about a mother desperate to find her missing boy moved up fourth, earning 9.4 million dollars.
The teen slasher "The Haunting of Molly Hartley" debuted in fifth place, taking in 6.0 million dollars.
The pooches of "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" slipped two spots to sixth with a 4.7-million-dollar take and pushing the film's five-week total boxoffice earnings to 84 million.
Close on their heels was "The Secret Life of Bees," the screen version of the novel by Sue Monk Kidd featuring Oscar-winning actress and singer Jennifer Hudson took in 4.0 million dollars.
"Max Payne," Fox's noir, fantasy-tinged movie based on the best-selling video game and starring Mark Wahlberg as a revenge-driven undercover New York cop, came in eighth earning 3.7 million dollars.
In ninth place, futuristic thriller "Eagle Eye" took in 3.4 million dollars for a six-week total of 92.5 million.
Rounding out the top 10 was Gavin O'Connor's cop film "Pride and Glory," starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell, with 3.3 million dollars.
Oliver Stone's biography of President George W. Bush, "W," slipped to 11th place this weekend with 2.5 million dollars, nipping Ridley Scott's spy thriller "Body of Lies" with 2.4 million dollars.
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-23 17:35:20
