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AS if 2020 did not bring its fair share of horrors to the world, US movie-goers seem to crave more. Fright film The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It earned an estimated US$24 million last weekend to top the North American box office as more theatres continue to reopen after a bleak year.

The new Warner Bros release, the latest in the popular Conjuring franchise, shouldered aside last weekend's breakthrough box office leader, A Quiet Place: Part II. Its result was considered especially positive for Warner since Conjuring is already available online to HBO Max subscribers at no extra cost. The film again has Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as paranormal investigators grappling with demonic nastiness.

Quiet Place, another scare film, directed by John Krasinski and starring his wife Emily Blunt, took in US$19.5 million for the Friday-through-Sunday period, down from the previous weekend's US$48 million but still considered a solid result with 75 per cent of theaters now open.

The Paramount film, about a family in a post-apocalyptic world haunted by fierce but mostly unseen monsters, is slated to become the quickest film to cross the US$100 million mark in North America since Covid-19 plunged the world - and the film industry - into crisis. "The landscape is becoming competitive again," Hollywood Reporter quoted Warner executive Jeff Goldstein as saying, "which is a great sign of things to come in the summer and fall".

In third place was Disney's family-friendly Cruella, an origin story based on its popular One Hundred and One Dalmatians. With Emma Stone as the sneering title villain, the live-action film took in US$11.2 million. Fourth spot went to Universal's computer-animated Spirit Untamed at US$6.2 million. Isabela Merced voices a young girl who befriends a wild mustang named Spirit. Jake Gyllenhaal and Julianne Moore also star. In fifth place, for the second straight week, was Disney's computer-animated fantasy Raya and the Last Dragon, at US$1.3 million. Its mostly Asian-American cast includes the voices of Awkwafina and Sandra Oh.

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Rounding out the top 10 were Wrath of Man (US$1.3 million); Spiral (US$890,000); Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train US$750,000); Godzilla vs Kong (US$463,000); and Dream Horse (US$230,000). AFP