Steve Carell remains on top of the box office after his sex comedy, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, stayed the number one movie through the weekend, taking in $16.3 million.

Figures from MTV.com show that Terry Gilliam’s latest fantastic offering, The Brothers Grimm, debuted in second place with $15.1 million.

The film, a highly fictionalized account of the fairy tale-tellers’ adventures, was delayed for a year as Gilliam fought over the final version with the brothers Weinstein, the heads of Miramax Films. As Harvey and Bob get set to move to a new film company, Miramax is now releasing a number of belated movies.

Wes Craven’s suspense thriller Red Eye continues to cruise in third place, while the weekend’s other notable new release, The Cave, a monster of a B-movie, opened weakly at #5 with $6.1 million.

And it should be observed that Undiscovered (featuring Ashlee Simpson as, wow, a singer trying to make it big) flopped with just $690,000. According to SFGate.com, that puts it at #20.

Ticket sales are down 2.5 per cent from the same weekend last year. BBC News reports that Hollywood is having its worst year since the late 1990s. Box office tracker Exhibitor Relations expects summer attendance to come in 12 per cent behind last year.






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