Kidnap Thriller Taken Tops the Box Office

Posted on February 2, 2009

Liam Neeson has topped the box office with his thriller, Taken. In Taken, Liam Neeson plays a former government operative who has to rescue his daughter from slave traders after she is kidnapped. Reuters says the film was seen by a mix of men and women.

"Taken" grabbed $24.6 million in just under 3,200 theaters, for an average of about $7,700 per theater, and it played to a mix of men and women, said a spokesman for its distributor, 20th Century Fox. Fox is a unit of News Corp..

With the media's spotlight on professional football's Super Bowl, overall weekend ticket sales of $103 million for the top 12 films were off 20 percent from the last weekend, and only slightly ahead of the same weekend last year, according to box office tracker Media by Numbers.

The strongly performing Paul Blart: Mall Cop came in at number two after winning the box office for two weeks straight. The film's success has Sony seeking more Paul Blart. The Uninvited, a horror flick, came in in the third spot.

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