Thriller, Friday Box Office | featured news

Liam Neeson and ‘Taken 2” are looking at a $48 million weekend after blasting past their box office rivals Friday and rolling to a first-day total of $18.6 million. The gangbusters debut for Fox’s PG13-rated action sequel marks the second consecutive week a movie has broken out and lifted the box office into positive territory. If the weekend stays on pace, it will finish more than 30 percent ahead of last year, when “Real Steel” lead the way with a $27 million debut.

“Shutter Island,” yanked from the fall release schedule by a cost-cutting Paramount Pictures, was a strong No. 1 at the North American box office.

Paramount's delay of Shutter Island's release, once widely questioned, now looks shrewdly strategic. Sources tell me this 4th film collaboration between Marty Scorsese and Leo DiCaprio is shaping up tonight as the highest-grossing debut ever, bigger than 2002's Gangs Of New York, 2004's The Aviator, and 2006's The Departed (which posted their previous biggest opening ever of $26.8M).