The Help Rises To The Top Of The US Box Office

Despite a slew of new movies hitting US cinemas over the weekend, none of them could match The Help, which rose to the top of the chart thanks to strong word of mouth, as well as the fact no one seemed all that interested in the competition. The Help dropped only 22% from last weekend, which is an incredibly modest fall, but some had expected other movies released would beat its $20 million take. In the end they all foundered.

Of the new openers, the one that ended up doing best was Spy Kids: All The Time In The World, which took $12.0 million. It's the weakest opening for any of the Spy Kids movies, which isn't too much of a surprise, as its original audience has now grown up and the new one probably doesn't know much about the franchise. Nevertheless, the movie did better than Conan The Barbarian, which took only $10 million, despite costing over $70 million to make. It's a big disappointment for a movie many had high hopes for.

Fright Night did even worse, with the new take on the 80s horror-comedy only making $7.3 million in its first weekend. The movie cost just $20 million to make, but even so, this is going to be seen as a bit of a failure for a film some thought could become a bit of a sleeper hit.

The final new entry on the chart was One Day, which had a more limited opening than the other fresh films, but still took a rather weak $5.1 million. Unless the film gets some significant word of mouth - which seems unlikely - the Anne Hathaway movie will disappear from cinemas in the States very quickly. It was certainly a bit of a disastrous weekend for new films all round.

Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of August 19th-21st.