Zombieland Earns the Hollywood Kill of the Week

The clouds have finally parted on the recently plagued box office, only to reveal a baby grand piano tumbling from the sky and splatting zombie guts across a 14-foot radius. Congratulations, Cynthia Knickerbocker -- your deadly ingenuity has saved Hollywood.

1. Zombieland

Gross: $25,000,000 (new)

Screens: 3,036 (PSA: $8,235)

Weeks: 1

Riding its impressive Friday haul and positive twuzz to a first place finish was Zombieland. It seemed everyone was just searching for a sweet, nerdy, dryly humorous little zombie flick to stroke the hair behind their ears and whisper how everything would be all right. We know we were.

2. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Gross: $16,700,000 (cume: $82,392,000)

Screens: 2,977 (PSA: $5,610)

Weeks: 3 (Change: -33.3%)

Meanwhile Sony's other offering met expectations to secure second place, suggesting Cloudy's bathroom-themed sequel -- in which a unnamed American city is terrorized by unexplained talcum powder snowfalls, baby shampoo showers, and Category 7 shitstorms -- might have already been quietly pushed into pre-production.

3. Toy Story / Toy Story 2 (3D)

Gross: $12,500,000 (new)

Screens: 1,745 (PSA: $7,163)

Weeks: 1

Its marathon running time of 169 minutes was likely one deterrent keeping parents from this re-release, but we'd argue that this was exactly how these Pixar classics were best meant to be viewed -- as sprawling, Wagnerian socialist critiques of industrialized societies and their flagrant abuses, as told through the interchangeable eyes of Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, standing in for the proletariat.

4. The Invention of Lying

Gross: $7,350,000 (new)

Screens: 1,707 (PSA: $4,306)

Weeks: 1

Congratulations are in order to Ricky Gervais, who secured fourth place with his apocryphal tale of the first man to discover the act of not telling the truth. (Which eventually led to the expression, "Liar, Liar, pants on fire," after another man discovered fire. If that joke's in the movie already, I apologize. Rough Sunday.)

6. Whip It

Gross: $4,850,000 (new)

Screens: 1,720 (PSA: $2,820)

Weeks: 1

A modest rollout on 1,700 screens still couldn't quite explain the paltry per screen averages on Drew Barrymore's go-go-girl-power directorial debut. Clearly, the chicks who were supposed to be cheering on Whip It were instead cheering on Zombieland. There's only one person to blame for this: Jesse Eisenberg. Jesse Eisenberg killed chick cinema! Let's get him, girls! Grab your torches!

[Data: BoxOfficeMojo.com]