The Perfect Guy Tops US Box Office with $26.7 Million

The Perfect Guy and The Visit have topped the North American box office this weekend.

The Perfect Guy, about a newly single woman whose new boyfriend is not all he seems, topped the chart with a first weekend tally of $26.7 million.

The Visit was not far behind, taking $25.6 million between Friday and Sunday.

The movies’ success has been attributed in part to a strong female turn-out.

An estimated 69% of The Perfect Guy‘s audience were women, while The Visit‘s audience was 60% female.

With its three black stars – Sanaa Lathan, Michael Ealy and Morris Chestnut – The Perfect Guy continues the recent trend for chart-topping films with African-Americans in leading roles.

War Room and Straight Outta Compton, a biopic of rap group NWA, were the previous occupants of the No 1 berth.

The Visit represents a comeback for Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan, whose last movie was the critically savaged 2013 sci-fi opus After Earth.

Produced by Blumhouse, The Visit tells of a brother and sister who make an unsettling revelation at a remote Pennsylvania farm.

War Room dropped to third place with a second weekend haul of $7.4 million, while Robert Redford’s A Walk in the Woods dropped one place to four.

This week’s top five is rounded out by Tom Cruise’s fifth Mission: Impossible movie, which has now made almost $613 million at the worldwide box office.