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The biggest battle was not between films this weekend at the box office. Instead, it was between Liam Neeson and two football teams vying for gridiron supremacy. Taken, Neeson's new violent actioner, dominated the weekend, as Fox took a risk putting a film aimed at men against the Super Bowl. Other openers included The Uninvited from Paramount, and old-fashioned Super Bowl counter-programming in New In Town, the oft-mocked comedy with Renee Zellweger.

Super Bowl weekend at movie theatres has been a quiet place for male adults over the last few years. Last year, Hannah Montana's 3-D concert movie opened huge, earning $31 million over three days, while Jessica Alba's The Eye (female-oriented horror, much like The Uninvited) opened to $12 million. That weekend, returning male-oriented films like Rambo and Cloverfield dropped 61% and 62% respectively. The year before, The Messengers (again, female-oriented horror) opened to a soft $14.7 million, and was followed closely by chick flick Because I Said So ($13.1 million opening), and Smokin‘ Aces fell 58%. In 2006, chick-horror When A Stranger Calls opened to $21.6 million (a Super Bowl weekend record until Hannah Montana showed up), and the romantic comedy Something New bombed with $4.9 million. Can you say trend? 2005 brought a horror movie (Boogeyman) and a rom-com (The Wedding Date). So finally this year, 20th Century Fox took a chance on males with Taken, and the gamble paid off in a very large way.

Taken is our number one film of the weekend, as it took a man with a gun to push Paul Blart: Mall Cop out of top spot and off his Segway. Taken earned a strong $24.6 million from a quite wide venue count of 3,183 and had a per-location average of $7,736. Fox used some smart scheduling to propel the thriller to the top, as the top movies in release have been bereft of a male actioner since the Tom Cruise vehicle Valkyrie was released at Christmas (it finished 19th last weekend). Combine that with an extremely strong marketing campaign (that TV ad got my blood going), and an actor whose last wide release live action work was a Batman film, and you've got a Super Bowl weekend winner in Taken.

Liam Neeson has never been a huge box office draw on his own, but has made some excellent choices over his 25 plus years as an actor. Notable in the '80s for his early work in films like Excalibur and The Mission, Neeson became an even bigger name after headlining Darkman in 1990, the dark super-hero type flick from director Sam Raimi. This was Raimi's biggest hit until Spider-Man (I don't count For the Love of the Game). Darkman opened to $8 million almost 20 years ago, and finished with four times that amount. Neeson headlined Schindler's List three years later, earning a Best Actor nomination as the movie made over $300 million worldwide. In the years following, Neeson tried to headline a few projects but had little success commercially as Rob Roy and Michael Collins struggled domestically with $31 million and $11 million respectively. Then in 1999, he took a large role in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (and was the only thing good in that movie), and it grossed $431 million. He followed that up with The Haunting ($73 million), Gangs of New York ($77 million), and Batman Begins ($205 million). Most recently, he has lent his voice to the Narnia films as Aslan. With Taken, Neeson proves he can draw an audience as the top liner again.

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