Glorious Weekend for Borat

'Borat' Banks $29M, Keeps Top Movie Spot
Sunday, November 12

A make-believe son of the glorious nation of Kazakhstan continues to rule the American box office. Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" took in $29 million to remain the No. 1 movie for a second straight weekend, distributor 20th Century Fox said Sunday. "Borat" raised its 10-day total to $67.8 million.

Crudely funny and raucously satiric, "Borat" was a surprise winner at the box office with a $26.5 million opening weekend, even though it played in only 837 theaters, fewer than one-fourth the number of cinemas for "The Santa Clause 3" and "Flushed Away."

Some box-office analysts had questioned whether 20th Century Fox missed the boat by launching "Borat" in so few theaters, saying the movie could have rung up millions more on opening weekend if it had gone wider.

But Snyder said the buzz from the movie's huge debut proved a great prelude to wider release in its second weekend, when it expanded to 2,566 theaters.

"When a picture takes off like this, you can do it any way you want and you can't screw it up, quite honestly, when a picture becomes a part of the culture like this," Snyder said.