Mira Nair's Vanity Fair sinks further

The zombie fantasy thriller Resident Evil: Apocalypse woke up the US box-office with decent numbers over the weekend.

Last week's champ, the far superior and rousing martial art drama Hero, took another big dip. But the Chinese film, released in America two years after it opened in Asia, is still capable of earning $50 million, no small feat for a subtitled film.

Mira Nair's Vanity Fair, which opened with weak numbers last week, is sinking fast, and may find it difficult to reach even the $20 million mark.

By next weekend, it will be the highest grossing film for Nair in North America, surpassing the $14 million gross of her
Monsoon Wedding. But the latter was made for just about $1 million while Vanity Fair cost about $23 million.

The sequel to 2002's surprise hit Resident Evil, based on a video game series, the new film predictably got lousy reviews but young men embraced it and its scantily-dressed heroine Milla Jovovich in a big way.

Jovovich also gets to kick quite a few butts as she tries to help a group of survivors of a zombified metropolis from yet another menace.

The film, which cost about $25 million, opened with $23.7 million and could earn $100 million worldwide in movie theatres. A bigger bounty awaits the movie in video stores.  

Another medium budget film, Cellular with Kim Basinger in the lead, was made for about $24 million and rang up about $10.6 across North America. Basinger plays a kidnap victim whose random call to a cell phone sets in motion a new drama.  The thriller is bound to make a good profit since it did not cost a fortune. It received fairly good reviews from Roger Ebert who
declared, 'What's surprising is how convincing it is' in the Chicago Sun-Times, In The New York Times, A O Scott called the film 'an honest, unpretentious, well-made B picture.'

Following Hero, Princess Diaries 2 and Anacondas, Vanity Fair struggled at seventh place, earning $2.8 million, having come down by 43 percent from the previous week.

Two small budget films have shown remarkable staying power, and both offer plenty of laughter. At third place and riding higher than Hero was the buddy comedy Without a Paddle.  

Fox Searchlight spent about $10 million to promote Napoleon Dynamite, a wild comedy about a weird little guy and his friends, which was made for less than half a million dollars. The investment is surely paying back in a significant way. The movie is hanging in ninth place with a $2.5 million gross and headed for a $40 million gross. A couple of weeks ago,
the distributor coined a new tagline for the film: The biggest hero of the summer.