"Cloverfield" soars to top of box office

06/02/2008 10:36

LONDON (Reuters) - Monster movie "Cloverfield" smashed its way to the top of the box office in its opening weekend, ending Johnny Depp’s brief run at No. 1 as Sweeney Todd, according to Screen International on Tuesday.

The critically acclaimed story of a monster ravaging New York, filmed using "Blair Witch" style moving hand-held camerawork, took 3.4 million pounds in its first three days.

Oscar-nominated "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" was down in second place.

Tim Burton’s adaptation of the 1979 Stephen Sondheim musical could see Depp win best actor at the Oscars later this month for his blood-soaked performance as the murderous barber extracting revenge in 19th century London.

New at three was "Over Her Dead Body", a romantic comedy with Eva Longoria Parker of the TV hit show "Desperate Housewives", as a ghost of a woman killed on her wedding day and determined to stop her fiance falling in love again.

Also new, at four, was romantic comedy-cum fairy tale "Penelope" with Christina Ricci as a girl left with a pig’s snout for a nose by a family curse.

At five, down one place, was Tommy Lee Jones in the Oscar-nominated "No Country for Old Men," an ultra-violent story of theft, pursuit and slaughterhouse bolts in 1980s Texas.

Down three at .....continued below

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six was Hilary Swank’s portrayal of a smart Manhattanite who gets mail from her dead husband in "P.S. I Love You", while "Alvin and the Chipmunks" stayed in seventh place.

The schoolgirls of "St Trinian’s" were down three at eight, with the superhero crime-fighting newcomer "Underdog" at nine.

Biggest faller of the week, down eight places to 10 was "Alien Vs Predator: Requiem".

(Reporting by Steve Addison, editing by Avril Ormsby)