Adam Sandler has had a meteoric rise in his box office standing ever since the Wedding Singer. His previous films Billy Madison grossed a total $25.5M; Happy Gilmore, $38.6M; and Bulletproof; $21.2M. The 80.2 million dollars of the Wedding Singer introduced Sandler's unique humour to a larger and more mainstream audience. Who ever would have thought that the Waterboy would actually DOUBLE the first week figures of the Wedding Singer? Grossing an estimated 39.1 million dollars, by the end of its run, Waterboy should have made more money than all his previous films combined. In Mr Showbiz's box office challenge, I sold the Waterboy at 26 million, because I thought it would gross 25 million max in the first weekend (since the competition calculates first 2 weekends, I intend for a 1.5 X return - and I thought Waterboy wouldn't delivver that return - the return now will be around 2.5 X). How monumentally wrong was I, even though my 25 million max figure was higher than what everyone else thought.

With this opening, Adam Sandler probably approaches (and in box office terms - escalates) the pre eminent position of Jim Carrey in the cinematic comedy world. To put it into perspective - this is the second highest opening for Disney after the 40.8 million dollars for the Lion King. Even Ace Ventura - when nature calls, opened with 37.8 million at the height of Jim Carrey's fame (actually - he still hasn't gone down from his height). The figure is made even more amazing when comparing it to the 36.1 million Armageddon made on the Independence Day weekend. This weekend was a non-holiday weekend and was opening against another strong film (The Siege - which made a strong 14-15 million dollars this weekend). This movie has also saved Disney from an embarrassing post-summer season (people, if I had money - I'd purchase shares in Disney immediately - A Bug's Life and Enemy of the State aare to follow), where Holy Man flopped and I think Mafia too was made by them. The movie is also a phenomenal result for the director, Frank Coraci, who was also director of the Wedding Singer. By the end of the year, Coraci will have grossed his bosses 250 million dollars. PS. Note that the screen average for the Waterboy was over 14 thousand dollars. The usual is around 5 thousand for a no 1 film. This means that many were turned away from theatres, and coupled with an 80% approval rating from exit polls (80% will reccommend it to others), the film will not drop that much next week (maybe to 30 million).

Meanwhile other films to do particularly well were Antz, which didn't lose any money (in fact it gained 20%) from last week (5.4 million), and heads for a 90-95 million total at the US Box Office - the highest grossing non-Disney animated film. Just wait for the Prince of Egypt (I say 150-200 million)!

In great news for Australia's Cate Blanchett: Elizabeth, which opened on just nine screens, made 291 thousand dollars - that's a very high 31 thousand dollars per screen. Hopefully, word of mouth builds on this performance. Out of all the acting I've seen this year, she deserves to be in the best actress category (as well as Christina Ricci) - and by far - deserves to win.

Anyway, here's what the box office gurus has to say:

(figures in brackets are cumulative totals)

1 The Waterboy $ 39,100,000

2 The Siege $14,700,000

3 Pleasantville $6,000,000 ($26,590,000)

4 The Wizard of Oz $5,500,000

5 Antz $5,400,000 ($74,837,000)

6 Living Out Loud $4,450,000 ($4,696,000)

7 Practical Magic $4,300,000 ($39,877,000)

8 Vampires $4,000,000 ($15,662,000)

9 Belly $3,700,000 ($4,869,000)

10 Rush Hour $3,500,000 ($127,222,000)

THIS WEEKENDThat sonic boom you heard over the weekend wasn't John Glenn's shuttle returning from space. It was Adam Sandler making an enormous splash with his out-of-this-world comedy smash The Waterboy. The Buena Vista picture opened triumphantly at number one with a mammoth $39.1M, according to estimates, giving it the biggest November opening in history as well as the largest debut for a film outside of the May-June-July summer period. Accounting for 43% of all ticket sales in the top ten, the film about a short-tempered waterboy recruited onto a college football team sacked moviegoers on 2,664 gridirons giving it the best opening average of 1998 with a potent $14,677 per theater.

The Waterboy certainly had enough hydrogen and oxygen to blast it into orbit as the Buena Vista title claimed the top live-action opening in the studio's history surpassing Armageddon's $36.1M thrust, and the second-best overall opening for the Disney family behind The Lion King's $40.9M. For the year, the Adam Sandler laugher stands as the third largest behind Godzilla and Deep Impact. After just three days of release, The Waterboy has already grossed more than most of the comedian's prior films including Happy Gilmore ($38.6M), Billy Madison ($25.5M), and Bulletproof ($21.2M). Sandler now joins the comedy elite as The Waterboy's opening has surpassed debut performances by titans like Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy, and Robin Williams.

This $39.1M splash by The Waterboy is nothing short of remarkable. Originally slated for a September launch, the movie was backed by extensive advertising with its star making appearances on talk shows and specials. The ex-Opera Man, hot off the $80M-grossing hit The Wedding Singer, used his coattails to bring ticket buyers back to the box office at a time when overall sales were at critically low levels for two weeks. Despite weak reviews, The Waterboy used starpower as a magnet bringing in a wide range of consumers. With a reported production budget of just $19 million, the Adam Sandler film becomes a badly-needed hit for Buena Vista which has seen disappointing results from Beloved, Holy Man and Mafia! during the last few months. The distrib has more ammo in November with Enemy of the State and A Bug's Life.

Phil Barlow, president of distribution for Buena Vista, stated "we had very high expectations for this picture and its performance just blew them all away." The Waterboy's $16.07M gross on Saturday represented a new one-day record for the studio. Barlow reports that 80% of movie patrons said they would definitely recommend the film and that the male/female split was about 60/40 with a younger-skewing audience. Buena Vista is understandably excited about the opening of their picture and believes that the monster opening will be good for the industry as a whole since it expanded the marketplace over the weekend.

In addition to Adam Sandler's cajun grin, a number of new faces popped up in the top ten. Fox's action thriller The Siege opened in second place with an estimated $14.7M. Starring Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, and Bruce Willis, the movie about terrorism hitting New York City opened in 2,541 mosques and averaged a good $5,785 per theater. The Siege marks the third collaboration between Washington and director Edward Zwick after 1989's Glory (which won the actor an Oscar) and 1996's Courage Under Fire. For Washington, The Siege gave him the third best opening of his career trailing Crimson Tide's $18.6M launch and The Pelican Brief's $16.6M debut. Fox has the action thriller market to themselves for two weeks so long-term prospects for The Siege could be decent.

Slipping one spot to third was New Line's Pleasantville with an estimated $6M in its third week. Down just 13% from last weekend's Halloween-interrupted frame, the Gary Ross picture has grossed $26.6M to date and looks well on its way to becoming a moderate hit. Most films in the top ten generally saw modest declines compared to last weekend when the fright night fell on the normally busy Saturday.

Warner Bros. rereleased the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz over the weekend and took in a gross of $5.5M, according to estimates. Opening fourth in 1,879 locations (uncommonly wide for a reissue) the beloved family favorite averaged $2,927 per theater. Warner was hoping that moviegoers young and old would follow the yellow brick road to their local multiplex for a chance to see this polished screen gem. However, since The Wizard of Oz has always been readily available on network television and home video, it seemed that few wanted to pay a premium for the big screen experience.

The DreamWorks computer-animated bug pic Antz saw a rare 20% boost in business, despite competition for the family crowd from The Wizard of Oz, and grossed an estimated $5.4M. That brings the cume for the pic to an impressive $74.8M and gives it a fair chance of hitting the $100M mark by the end of its run. Living Out Loud, starring Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito, and Queen Latifah, expanded into nationwide release and earned an estimated $4.45M. Playing in 1,086 cinemas, the New Line flick placed seventh and averaged a sturdy $4,098 per site bringing its cume to $4.7M.

The witchy women of Practical Magic attracted another $4.3M of business, according to estimates, to take seventh place. The Warner Bros. picture's cume after its fourth weekend is now a solid $39.9M. Moviegoers drove a stake through the heart of John Carpenter's Vampires as the horror pic tumbled 56% from its number one debut last weekend finishing the frame with an estimated $4M. After ten days, the James Woods film has sucked $15.7M out of the box office and looks headed for a final tally of about $20-25M.

Artisan enjoyed the first top ten debut of its short revamped history as the urban action drama Belly locked up the number nine spot with an estimated $3.7M. The distributor formerly known as Live released the picture in just 600 sites and came away with the third best per-theater average in the top ten with $6,167. Directed by music video veteran Hype Williams, Belly stars best-selling hip hop artists DMX and Nas. The film's five-day gross since its Wednesday opening is $4.9M. Belly's strong debut caught some in the industry by surprise. Last week's Variety review of the film said "expect no showy B.O. numbers for this cinematic menace" while The Hollywood Reporter's weekend preview story on Friday failed to even mention the movie even though other limited releases were.

Rush Hour displayed another fabulous hold dipping only 8% and collecting an estimated $3.5M in its eighth stint in the top ten. With $127.2M in the bank, the Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker blockbuster has nudged past Dumb and Dumber to become New Line's second highest-grossing movie ever behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which kicked up $133M in 1990. New Line has become known for its fists of fury as the distributor has hit martial arts gold before with hits like Mortal Kombat, Blade, and Turtles 2.

In limited release, Gramercy's Elisabeth ruled over nine locations in New York and Los Angeles and grossed an estimated $279,000 for a very noble average of $31,000. The reception was much cooler for the 15th anniversary reissue of The Big Chill which corpsed and averaged a frigid $1,300 by grossing an estimated $65,000 in 50 sites. The neo-nazi film American History X remained steady in its second weekend of limited release and grossed an estimated $151,000 in 19 theaters for an average of $7,947 per site.

Dropping out of the top ten were Bride of Chucky (now at $29M), Beloved ($21M), Soldier ($13.5M), What Dreams May Come ($53M) and Apt Pupil ($8M). The flood of new product at the box office was just what the marketplace needed to jumpstart the lucrative holiday season. Ticket sales for the top ten films were at its highest level in three months. While November 1997 failed to top November 1996, this year the month looks to have enough firepower to set a new benchmark.