'Puss' tops weekend B.O.

'Puss in Boots'"Puss in Boots" needed a larger set of knee-levels to trek with the recent mucky B.O. market.The Vital-DreamWorks Animation toon first showed with $34 million, enough to win the domestic box office, but not able to reverse a malaise among moviegoers.B.O. commentators thought "Puss," which gained a soft 51% of their opening from three dimensional, would benefit more from the five-week gap in the household market ("Dolphin Tale" was the final family-specific film to bow on Sept. 23). Though Imax, often a fan-boy driven format, led a good 7% from the total domestic opening for "Puss," with $3.two million globally.It isn't obvious just how much Halloween weekend affected the toon's opening, because the holiday falls on the Monday this season. But "Puss" did narrowly beat the holiday's previous best opener, "Saw III," which first showed at $33.six million in 2006.Last Century Fox's high-concept actioner "Over TimeInch bowed consistent with anticipation, grossing an believed $12 million through Sunday, as the weekend's other wide release, FilmDistrict's "The Rum Diary," underperformed with $5 million.Showing a wise move for The new sony, meanwhile, the studio's scaly-back discharge of "Anonymous" led to an excellent opening per-screen average of $3,774, especially thinking about the film opened up in a still-aggressive (for any limited release) 265 Stateside locations. According to soft early monitoring, The new sony made the decision late in the overall game to visit limited with "Anonymous," rather than the film's expected wide release.Par's niche pic "Constantly,Inch distribbed through the studio's Componen Vantage label, arrived on the scene strong by having an believed weekend gross of $120,000 from four locations, which produced a $30,000 per-screen average. Contact Andrew Stewart at andrew.stewart@variety.com