Submitted by: kirkland on Monday August 09th, 2004 at 08:15 AM EST

The box office superhero's first outing as a villain, in director Michael Mann's thriller "Collateral," made off with a middling $24.4 million during its first three days at the North American box office, according to studio estimates issued on Sunday.

The opening is in the same range as Cruise's previous R-rated efforts like last December's "The Last Samurai" ($24.3 million) and 2001's "Vanilla Sky" ($25 million). But it represents the second-smallest No. 1 debut this summer. The smallest was the anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which earned $23.9 million on many fewer screens.

Last weekend's champion, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's suspense film "The Village," fell to No. 2 with $16.6 million, as bad word-of-mouth saw the film lose a hefty two-thirds of its audience from last weekend.

It was followed by the Matt Damon spy thriller "The Bourne Supremacy" with $14.1 million in its third weekend, the Denzel Washington conspiracy drama with $10.8 million in its second weekend, and the Brittany Murphy romantic comedy "Little Black Book," which opened with a disappointing $7.0 million.

» Read full story @ Reuters
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