According to early estimates at Boxofficemojo, moviegoers were in the mood for a bloody slasher. Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Prom Night came in at number one over the weekend at the domestic multiplex marketplace, with approximately $22.7 million in ticket grosses. Horror is back, baby, after the ruinous performance of Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) The Ruins. That film plunged to eighth place, and it has only taken in about $13 million so far after two full weekends on the silver screen -- as can be seen, the teen/college crowd responded much better to the slick marketing campaign behind Prom Night than it did to the one offered up in support of Viacom's project.

Street Kings from News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) couldn't even come close to Prom Night, as it only did about $12 million -- that was good enough for second place, though. Sony's 21 dropped to third place after two weekends at top, its total gross now standing at around $62 million. News Corp.'s Nim's Island was fourth, and George Clooney's Leatherheads, from General Electric's (NYSE: GE) Universal asset, is right now in fifth place with $6.2 million. Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, the number-six film, was credited with a similar amount, so it might end up changing places with Clooney's unfortunate not-blockbuster.

Sony had a pretty good weekend between Prom Night and 21. I can see how the younger crowds reacted in a positive manner to the horror piece -- we are pretty much in the season, after all, when high-school kids across the land are preparing for the popular cultural rite. Plus, there is some significant brand equity to the title -- Jamie Lee Curtis starred in the classic 1980 film with the same name (to the best of my knowledge, this is not a remake of that cinematic icon). Sony's challenge now is to keep the momentum going and get this thing as close to $100 million as possible -- I don't think the century mark is 100% doable in this case, but approaching it will ensure that a new franchise is born. Who knows, maybe we'll see a Prom Night video game on the PlayStation 3.

Disclosure: I own shares of General Electric; positions can change at any time.

According to Boxofficemojo, Sony (NYSE: SNE)'s 21 movie was number one over this past weekend at the domestic marketplace, taking in an estimated $15 million. This number may change once the final data comes in, but its worth noting that 21 is doing well for Sony's studio -- the casino movie's total gross so far is around $46 million, and if the numbers hold, this will be the second weekend in the top spot for the picture.

A movie that had a lot of buzz, George Clooney's period-sports comedy Leatherheads, came in second (maybe; I'll get to this in a sec) with $13.5 million. It's distributed by General Electric (NYSE: GE)'s Universal asset, and I have to say that it didn't feel like the movie would top the charts. Nevertheless, it came pretty close, and I have to admit that I thought it was going to totally bomb: didn't look interesting, didn't look like the kind of idea that I'd allocate capital toward, and its marketing campaign didn't seem too thrilling. But since George Clooney was attached to it, I'm sure studio execs were extremely confident. Maybe a fall release would have been better for this one.

And then we have News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)'s Fox, which was perhaps disappointed on the one hand and happy on the other. Nim's Island came in third, and third is almost always a glum spot for a debut rank. But Fox's Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!, which is still kicking in fourth place, has now grossed approximately $131 million after four weekends. Fox is certainly pleased with that one. I don't know when the company plans on releasing the DVD, but this box-office performance would seem to portend a brisk-selling DVD during the holiday season. However, Nim's Island is estimated right now to have grossed $13.3 million. When the hard stats are in, it could easily displace Leatherheads and take second best for the weekend. Poor George Clooney.

Who was the big winner at the box office this weekend? It was Sony (NYSE: SNE) and its 21 movie starring Kevin Spacey. According to early estimates at Boxofficemojo, the film took in over $23 million in its first three days of release. Looks like the market is finally getting at least a little tired of News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! -- it fell to second place, raking in about $17 million, enough to put it beyond the coveted -- although not so impressive anymore -- $100 million mark.

Here, though, is the big surprise of the weekend from where I'm sitting -- maybe I'm not with it or something, but I thought that Superhero Movie was going to dominate. It was released by MGM and Dimension. How in the world could this have missed? It came in third with a horrible estimate of $9.5 million -- let's hope that number gets revised upward, because a gross of less than $10 million for a movie that should have been popular to the Scary Movie generation is pretty embarrassing. It seemed to have an effective marketing campaign, though; the commercials described what looked like a fun time at the multiplex, bringing home the fact that the spoof of films such as Spider-Man and X-men probably contained quite a few bellylaugh moments. Guess the timing just wasn't there for it.