Go the Nickstar! Now, how long do I have to wait to buy the Ghost Rider XBox 360 game, eh? You know the one, with interactive choice of leather outfits for both leading characters "The Ghost" and his sidekick Roxanne? Not to mention choice of evil nemesis Blackheart or Mephistopheles?
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Satan's bounty hunter has looted the wallets of movie-goers. "Ghost Rider," Sony's comic-book adaptation starring Nicolas Cage as a motorcycle stunt driver moonlighting as a collector of evil souls for the devil, debuted as the top weekend movie with $44.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Though trashed by critics, "Ghost Rider" helped pull Hollywood out of its box-office doldrums, with overall revenues rising for the first time in six weekends. The top 12 movies took in $141.4 million, up 28 percent from the same weekend last year.
"This is the weekend that could turn the tide and get us going in the right direction," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers.
Based on the Marvel Comic books, "Ghost Rider" delivered Hollywood's biggest opening so far this year, topping the $34.2 million debut for "Norbit." "Ghost Rider" was the best opening weekend ever for Cage, beating the $35.1 million debut of "National Treasure."
"Ghost Rider" also extended Hollywood's winning streak with comic-book adaptations, a genre some critics have said would eventually play itself out.
"I think as long as stories are being told in a way that audiences embrace them, you can go for a long, long, long, long time," Bruer said.
Coming this summer are two big comic-book sequels, Sony's "Spider-Man 3" and 20th Century Fox's "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer."
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Take heed of these words, my friends.... "You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give" Kahlil Gibran
