Spoof sequel melts Ice Age from top spot

BOB and Harvey Weinstein returned to the box-office lead as Scary Movie 4 debuted with $41 million (€33.44m), the first number-one opening for the company founded by the former Miramax bosses.

It was the best Easter weekend debut ever, beating the $30.1m (€22.6m) of Panic Room in 2002, according to studio estimates.

Scary Movie 4 was released under the Weinstein Co’s Dimension label, which the brothers brought with them after they left Disney-owned Miramax last year. Disney continues to share half the proceeds from the Scary Movie flicks and any future installments in pre-existing Dimension franchises, such as the Scream or Spy Kids series.

Ice Age: The Meltdown, which had been number one the previous two weekends, slipped to second place with $20m (€16.32m), raising its total to $147.2m (€120m).

Hollywood’s overall revenues rose for the fourth-straight weekend, with the top-12 movies grossing $110m (89.8m). That was up 23% from 2005’s Easter weekend.

The Ice Age and Scary Movie sequels have provided a solid lead-in to what analysts consider a strong early-summer lineup that launches next month with Mission: Impossible III and The Da Vinci Code.