LOS ANGELES, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Sunday estimates showed that two films opened with almost identical receipts, while a third new movie trailed close behind at a soft box office in North America over the weekend.
"End of Watch," a Jake Gyllenhaal cop drama, tied with Jennifer Lawrence's horror vehicle "House at the End of the Street," both on track to sell 13 million U.S. dollars worth of tickets in the United States and Canada.
The third debut, "Trouble With the Curve," a baseball drama that stars 82-year-old Clint Eastwood as a baseball scout, is estimated to rope in 12.7 million dollars, according to studio estimates released on Sunday.
The final receipts will be made public on Monday.
"End of Watch," an Open Road Films release, stars Gyllenhaal and Michael Pana as a pair of Los Angeles Police Department officers who work the streets of South-Central Los Angeles together. The riveting action thriller received the best CinemaScore grade of the four weekend debuts, an "A-."
"House at the End of the Street," the first movie Jennifer Lawrence has starred in since the release of the blockbuster "The Hunger Games" in March, fell short of the expectations of distributor Relativity Media, which foresaw an 18-million-dollar opening.
The 22-year-old actress plays a girl who moves to an eerie new neighborhood with her mother. Of those who saw the film, 61 percent were female and 70 percent were younger than 25 years old. Those who watched the movie assigned it an average grade of "B," according to CinemaScore.
In "Trouble With the Curve," released by Warner Bros., Eastwood plays an ailing baseball scout in his twilight years who takes his daughter (Amy Adams) along for one last recruiting trip. The first movie the veteran actor-director stars in -- but not directs -- in nearly two decades, it enjoys the highest number of screening theaters (3,012), but only received a mediocre CinemaScore grade of "B+."
Disney's "Finding Nemo 3-D" re-release was on track to post a 9. 4-million-dollar weekend, for a two-week gross of 30 million.
"Resident Evil: Retribution" was in fifth place, with a 6.7- million-dollar estimate this weekend and a two-week accumulation of 33.5 million.
The fourth debut of the weekend, "Dredd 3D," opened in sixth place with an estimated 6.3-million-dollar take. An adaptation of the British "Judge Dredd" comic hero, the Lionsgate ultra-violent R-rated actioner deals with a law enforcer who is tasked with bringing order to a futuristic post-apocalyptic world.
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