The video game-inspired feature Silent Hill ruled the box office over the April 21-23 weekend, bringing in US$20.2 million from theaters across North America, besting the horror spoof Scary Movie 4 and the debut of the 20th Century Fox thriller The Sentinel.

In Canada, Silent Hill grossed $1.8 million for a per-screen average of $7,500 for distributor Odeon Films.

"Genre films of this sort do extremely well, and often open very strong," says Jim Sherry, president of theatrical distribution for Alliance Atlantis, the parent of Odeon. "We couldn't be happier about it. As well, we look forward to good sales on DVD - a format that serves horror very well indeed."

The Canada/France copro shot in Ontario, produced on this side by Don Carmody (Resident Evil: Apocalypse), Samuel Hadida (Spider) and Andrew Mason of the Matrix trilogy.

The early returns make it, by a mile, the most successful Canadian movie of the year so far - a position that will be hard to overtake. The similarly shot and packaged Resident Evil: Apocalypse made US$64 million internationally before it was done in theaters in 2004.

AA is also handling the hockey biopic The Rocket, which, despite getting one of the biggest releases of its kind in English Canada, drew only a modest $325,000 from 172 locations - a per screen of $1,890, below that of other domestic films such as the low-budget Kamataki.

"There are always obstacles when subtitles are involved," says Sherry. "We knew it was going to be a hard sell. I think we may have lost some of the smaller towns in this."

The Rocket also opened on April 21, backed by a hefty ad campaign. It was one of the most ambitious releases ever of a French-language Quebec film in English Canada - getting three times as many screens as The Barbarian Invasions.

But Sherry is quick to add that he feels the film is "definitely going to benefit from word of mouth. This is a strong film, and our advance screenings indicate a very strong reaction to it. Maurice Richard is clearly a Canadian hero, not just a Quebec hero. Audiences will get that and pass it along to other possible filmgoers."

The Rocket was scheduled to drop to around 150 screens for its second week.