‘COLLATERAL’

A crowd of 800 showed up at one screening, despite competition from the Olympics on television. That’s good for the film and for its director, Michael Mann, but could be complicated for Jamie Foxx. Unless he is up for supporting actor for “Collateral,” he faces competing with his lead role in “Ray,” considered a strong contender for best actor

After Tom Cruise mentioned on a TV talk show that he was a fan, he and Stone became friends. “I went over to his house for lunch,” she says. “He has this trampoline in the back garden, and of course he does all the flips, because he’s Superman; he can do anything. He’s so nice, just a normal guy. And I love it because he has no agenda. What does he need from me? He’s Tom Cruise.”

“Collateral grabbed six No. 1 debuts over the weekend, including terrific debuts in South Korea, Italy, Australia and Spain. The biggest start came in Italy where the Michael Mann thriller grossed $2,710,036 from just 260 screens. That easily unseated Hero ($1.1 million second weekend, $4 million total) and topped such other Tom Cruise movies as Eyes Wide Shut ($2.5 million from 300) and Vanilla Sky ($2.2 million from 287) openings.

La Mala educación remained in third place in Italy with a second weekend haul of $995,300 (€809,800) from 231 screens, falling just 20% for a $2.9 million (€2.4 million) total. Director Pedro Almodovar’s latest openes Stateside on Nov. 19. In Spain, Collateral recorded a $2,183,384 debut from 337 screens, besting The Bourne Supremacy by 16% and Enemy of the State by 9%. South Korea was most surprising, however, with a massive $1,664,988 start from just 141 screens. That was better than Minority Report’s $1.2 million and one of the biggest openings for a U.S. movie this year.

In Australia, Collateral was able to keep fellow openers The Notebook and Open Water at bay with a $1,726,542 launch from 233 screens. It has a strong $7,410 per screen average, but wasn’t released widely enough to top most Tom Cruise pictures.

Collateral also had two strong No. 1 debuts in Finland and Turkey. Finland registered $128,802 from 30 screens narrowly unseating Home on the Range while Turkey had a $470,854 debut from 150 screens.

Collateral continued to do well in holdovers as well, lead by France’s third weekend gross of $1,211,259 from 470 screens for a 19-day total of $7,928,831. It was off 39% from last weekend.

Collateral ended up with a $12,305,376 weekend overall from 2,618 screens in 19 countries, shooting its total to $59,485,867. Still to go for the Tom Cruise-Jamie Foxx vehicle are Scandinavia and Japan, where Cruise has extreme star power.”