21 storms US box office
1st April, 2008
The casino-themed film 21 has had an impressive opening weekend on the US box office, storming into first-place position.
Columbia Pictures confirmed the figures for its latest release, which follows a posse of young mathematical whiz kids as they deploy their skills in Las Vegas under the guidance of professor (played by Kevin Spacey).
Targeting Sin City's most revered casino gambling establishments, the students master the skill of card counting in order to calculate the ratio of high cards to low cards in blackjack.
21 bumped the children's film Dr Seuss' Horton Hears a Who! off the top-spot - a position it had held for just two weeks.
"People are going nuts in Hollywood," Ben Mezrich, author of the book Bringing Down the House on which the film is based, told boston.com.
"About 3.5 to four million people saw the film this weekend, probably about seven million will have seen it by the end of next week, and when the DVD comes out this fall, we can expect another 30 million or so people to see it… So almost 40 million people will see it by the end of the year in the US alone."
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