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Daredevil Sees Record Presidents Day Debut

Moviegoers lifted DAREDEVIL out of relative comic book hero obscurity as the Twentieth Century Fox theatrical release starring Ben Affleck took in $43.5M, the biggest haul ever for a movie opening over Presidents Day weekend. Based on the Marvel Comics blind superhero, the film easily surpassed the previous best of $20.3M for last year's JOHN Q and was the second-best February debut ever behind HANNIBAL two years ago at $58M. Rich Thorne supervised visual effects for Fox with work done primarily by Rhythm & Hues, Pixel Magic and Digital Domain. HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS, with visual effects by Pixel Magic, dropped to second place with $19M and a $47.7M cume. CHICAGO, with visual effects from Toybox and Film Effects Inc., held steady at third place, taking in $12.9M to bring its total to $81M. Disney found an audience for more adventures from Baloo and Mowgli as JUNGLE BOOK 2 debuted in fourth place with $11.9M and cost under $20M to make. SHANGHAI KNIGHTS, featuring visual effects by Cinesite and Effects Assoc., dropped to fifth at $11.4M for a total of $34.6M while THE RECRUIT, with effects by Pacific Title, came in sixth with $6.8M and a cume of $38.8M. In seventh place was FINAL DESTINATION 2, with visual effects by Pixel Magic, taking in $6.2M for a total of $36.1M, followed by DELIVER US FROM EVA with $4.3M and $12.2M to date. KANGAROO JACK, effects by Asylum and The Secret Lab, is down under a bit at ninth with $4M and a total of $57.9M. LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS dropped out of tenth place as its theater count fell sharply and was replaced by SOMETHING ABOUT SCHMIDT, which moved up a notch with $3.5M and a total gross of $531M. Box office information obtained from boxofficemojo.com and Yahoo! Movies.