'Phone Booth' rings up top spot

LOS ANGELES -- "Phone Booth," starring Colin Farrell as a man trapped in a phone booth by a sniper, rang up $15 million in ticket sales to debut as the weekend's No. 1 movie.\nThe teen flick "What a Girl Wants," with Amanda Bynes as an outgoing American reunited with her stuffy British dad, opened in second place with $12.1 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.\nVin Diesel's action tale "A Man Apart," about a rogue federal agent battling a Mexican drug cartel, premiered at No. 3 with $11.2 million.\nLast weekend's top movie, "Head of State," fell to fourth place with $8.8 million.\nHollywood remained in a box-office slump, with the top 12 movies grossing $84 million, down 10 percent from the same weekend a year ago. It was the fourth straight weekend that revenues declined, and the box office so far is down about 7 percent compared to last year.\nStudio executives say the war in Iraq might be dampening the movie-going mood. But analysts said movie choices so far this year generally have been weaker than the first part of 2002, when hits such as "Ice Age," "Blade II," "John Q" and "Panic Room" opened to big audiences.\n"The fact that it's down four weekends in a row, everybody says, hey, this has to do with the war and people's moods," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "But no matter what the mood of the country, if there are good movies out there, people will want to go see them."\nThe box office should heat up this coming weekend, when the Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson comedy "Anger Management" opens. Coming a few weeks later is the "X-Men" sequel "X2," followed by "The Matrix Reloaded," the middle chapter of Keanu Reeves' sci-fi saga.\n"Phone Booth," directed by Joel Schumacher, stars Farrell as a publicist held hostage in Manhattan's last remaining phone booth by a sniper (Kiefer Sutherland).\nThe movie originally was set for release last November, but it was put on hold because of the sniper attacks around Washington, D.C., that killed 13 people. After two suspects were caught in those shootings, 20th Century Fox rescheduled the film, reasoning that enough time had passed and that its story line of a gunman targeting a specific victim was dissimilar.\nEddie Griffin's stand-up comedy concert movie "DysFun-Ktional Family" opened with $1.1 million in 602 theaters for a weak average of $1,827 a cinema, compared with $6,056 in 2,481 theaters for "Phone Booth."\nIn limited release, Nick Nolte's casino-heist caper "The Good Thief," directed by Neil Jordan, opened strongly in nine theaters with $137,626 for a $15,292 average.