'Fantastic Four' scores with $57.4 million debut weekend

LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood's superhero foursome is still fantastic at the box office.

The 20th Century Fox sequel "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" debuted as the No. 1 weekend flick with $57.4 million in sales, slightly surpassing the $56.1 million opening of "Fantastic Four" two years ago, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Among other new wide releases, a favorite teen detective had trouble finding an audience as the Warner Bros. mystery "Nancy Drew" premiered with a so-so $7.1 million to finish at No. 7.

Opening in narrower release was the Weinstein Co. thriller "DOA: Dead or Alive," an adaptation of the martial-arts video game that pulled in just $232,000. Playing in 505 theaters, "DOA" averaged a paltry $460 a cinema, compared to $14,499 in 3,959 theaters for "Fantastic Four" and $2,732 in 2,612 locations for "Nancy Drew."

The previous weekend's No. 1 movie, George Clooney and Brad Pitt's "Ocean's Thirteen," fell to No. 2 with $19.1 million. The Warner Bros. casino caper raised its 10-day total to $69.8 million, putting it on track to become the franchise's third $100 million hit.

Despite the big opening for "Fantastic Four," Hollywood revenue slipped for the third straight weekend. The top 12 movies took in $138.8 million, down 4 percent from the same weekend last year.

The industry had a blockbuster May with "Spider-Man," "Shrek" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequels, but big films are not holding their audiences after huge opening weekends.

After a surge early this year, attendance has slipped to just a fraction ahead of 2006, diminishing prospects of a record summer that many analysts had predicted.

The new "Fantastic Four" reunites the quartet of astronauts-turned-mutant-superheroes, played by Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis and Chris Evans. This time, the comic-book heroes join forces with archenemy Dr. Doom (Julian McMahon) to take down the Silver Surfer, an emissary leading a planet-destroying entity to Earth.

The studio and filmmakers toned down the action so the sequel could earn a PG rating to broaden the audience to family viewers. The first "Fantastic Four" was rated PG-13.

"A lot of the superhero comic-book movies are sort of geared toward being darker and edgier. We think 'Fantastic Four' is a more family friendly group of superheroes," said Chris Aronson, senior vice president for distribution at 20th Century Fox. "We wanted to make sure to cast a wide net and go after the family audience, and it worked."