LOS ANGELES – Horror, war or animal-centered comedy – take your pick. This weekend, horror prevailed on North American movie screens, with “scary as hell” film Annabelle: Creation pulling in $35 million in its first week out, more than paying off the $15 million Warner Bros. spent on it, analysts said.

The estimated three-day opening take for Annabelle, the fourth installment in the popular Conjuring franchise, was considered healthy for a supernatural horror flick. The film stars Stephanie Sigman, Talitha Bateman, Miranda Otto, Lulu Wilson and Anthony LaPaglia.

While this has been a weak summer overall for film, it was a good weekend for Warner Bros., which saw another of its productions, war movie Dunkirk, hold steady at second in the box-office race, with ticket sales of $11.4 million, industry site Exhibitor Relations reported.

That movie depicts the heroic 1940 evacuation of hundreds of thousands of Allied troops from Northern France. The film has a global take of $363.6 million so far, and has yet to be released in China, Japan, or Italy, according to boxofficemojo.com.

In third spot is the Open Road film Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, at $8.9 million, less than half the opening weekend take of the first Nut Job movie. The animated adventure tells the story of a group of animals trying to save their home from the bulldozer.

Sony’s The Dark Tower placed fourth, at $7.9 million, slipping from the No. 1 spot a week earlier. The sci-fi production, based on best-selling novels by horror/fantasy master Stephen King and starring Tom Taylor and Idris Elba, tells about a boy trying to save the world from enemies including bad guy Matthew McConaughey.

In fifth place, also from Sony, was The Emoji Movie, with $6.6 million in ticket sales. The computer-animated comedy, based on the expressive little symbols on cell phones, has an all-star voicing cast including James Corden, Anna Faris, Maya Rudolph, Christina Aguilera and Sofia Vergara.

Rounding out the top 10 were: Girls Trip ($6.5 million); Spider-Man: Homecoming ($6.1 million); Kidnap ($5.2 million); The Glass Castle ($4.9 million); and, Atomic Blonde ($4.6 million). – AFP

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