Video-game players and horror fans are pumping up the opening-week returns for "Silent Hill," the latest horror film based on -- yep, a video game.
The movie not only tops the national box-office chart but the local one, as well, although it did not make a clean sweep of multiplexes here. It ranks somewhere between first place and fourth wherever it's playing.
Second here is "Scary Movie 4," down 55 percent. Nationally, it's off 58 percent.
Third here is "The Sentinel," in which veteran Secret Service agent Michael Douglas goes on the lam when he's suspected of been the mole in a planned attempt on the President's life. It's beating "Silent Hill" at spots where the audience skews older than 30.
Fourth here is the year's top blockbuster to date, "Ice Age: The Meltdown," which is off 26 percent.
"The Benchwarmers" is fifth and running even with last week, thanks to the inclement weather that chased children into moviehouses.
"The Wild," a Disney cartoon feature that opened tepidly April 14, is up 6 percent in its second round, another beneficiary of the weather. It ranks sixth. "Take the Lead" takes seventh, off 30 percent.
No. 8 locally is "Failure to Launch," down 15 percent.
"Lucky Number Slevin" is running ninth here, falling 35 percent.
"Thank You for Smoking" settles into 10th spot with a 30 percent drop in revenue.
Newcomers "American Dreamz" and "Friends With Money" are running 11th and 12th, respectively.
The former flopped nationwide in wide release over the weekend.
"Friends With Money," though, had been doing extremely well in limited release in a few larger markets. Sony Classics opted to launch it wider in medium markets such as Pittsburgh, with an in-between approach.
It's in eight sites here instead of the usual 14 to 16 for wide releases, which may have stretched too thin a movie with more of a specialty-audience niche. Here, it fared best at a semi-art house, the Manor in Squirrel Hill.
Scheduled to open Friday are "Akeelah and the Bee," "United 93," "RV," "Stick It," "Kinky Boots," "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days," "The Beauty Academy of Kabul," "Going Shopping" and "Hard Candy."
