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Turns out we were in the mood for a little football this weekend, as Dwayne Johnson (aka the guy who will soon be formerly known as The Rock) and the Gridiron Gang finished first at the box office with $15 million. Pic marks the tenth number one film for Sony this year, breaking the previous record set by the same studio back in 2003.

Despite lukewarm reviews and its debuting in over a thousand less theaters, Brian De Palma's The Black Dahlia snuck into the weekend's number two spot with $10.4 million. Even with an all-star cast that includes Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank, I'd expect the negative buzz to hurt the film heading into its second week. Let's see if I'm right. With not much family-friendly type stuff out in theaters, Everyone's Hero (the animated film Christopher Reeve was working on prior to his death) snatched up the third spot, bringing in roughly $6.2 million from 2,896 theaters.

With only a couple thousand dollars separating the two, The Last Kiss (in which Zach Braff stars as a guy who's dissatisfied with where his life is at) just barely beat The Covenant (whose $4.7 million marked a 46% drop off in sales from the previous week in which it finished number one), capturing roughly $4.702 million.

Full numbers after the jump.

With only $9 million, The Covenant took top spot at the box office this weekend, marking the lowest opening for a number one film in three years. Seriously, $9 million? Man, did anyone go to the movies this weekend? With its PG-13 rating, pic chased after a younger, boy band-ish demographic, however, three-quarters of the audience was 18 or older.

Ben Affleck and the name 'Superman' was enough to boost Hollywoodland ($6 million) into the weekend's number two spot, even though it opened about $1 million shy of what studio execs were expecting. After finishing first two weeks in a row, Disney's Invincible failed to stay ahead of the pack, falling to third place with $5.8 million. Tony Jaa's martial arts extravaganza, The Protector ($5 million), and Jason Statham's Crank ($4.8 million) rounded out the top five.

Full numbers after the jump.

The Covenant revolves around a coven of hard-bodied Harry Potters in a Northeastern prep school. They are descendants of those famously accused witches of Salem, who were apparently the real deal after all. It's pointed out to us that these boys are actually more like witch-kids than witch-men, because they haven't yet reached a crucial birthday in the life of a male witch. At age 18, they will "ascend," which means they'll receive some kind of cosmic endorsement of their witchy virility and gain extra powers. They're already incapable of dying -- we see one of them smash his car head-on into a Mack truck, only to have the car and driver re-assemble in mid-air. But, horror of horrors, they can still grow old. The main witch, Caleb (Steven Strait) takes his new girlfriend Sarah (Laura Ramsey) to meet his father, a bedridden invalid who looks like Hugh Hefner after an hour in the tub. "He's 44 years old," Caleb whispers to Sarah, causing her to bite back a scream.

Age is a constant theme in The Covenant: The main characters discuss "turning 18" throughout the film, usually before or after one of the scenes in which they peel off their clothes and flex finely-chiseled abs. At times, I felt like I was watching a Barely Legal video. When one member of the coven turns 18 on the exact same day his disapproving-of-witchhood parents meet a grisly death, Caleb must figure out whether or not they have a poison apple in the bunch, and if so, how best to go about voting him out of the group. What results is a proudly mediocre mash-up of The Craft and Making the Band. It would all be straight-to-video flotsam if not for the strangely endearing quirks of director Renny Harlin, who's coming off a touch-and-go decade since he was forced to walk the plank over Cutthroat Island. Only Renny would include a scene where two witches are standing toe to toe, about to do battle, and one refers to the other as a "weeyatch."

Odds and ends from Wednesday:

• With a script from Steve Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) and David Cronenberg taking care of things behind the camera, I think it's safe to say I'm already looking forward to Eastern Promises. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Vincent Cassel has just signed on to play a man whose family owns a Russian brothel. The actor joins Naomi Watts and Viggo Mortensen.
• Okay, the following news is from Tuesday, not Wednesday -- but I won't tell anyone if you don't. Max Thieriot has hopped onboard Doug Liman's Jumper, where he'll be playing a younger version of Hayden Christiansen's character. Pic revolves around a kid (Christensen) who has the ability to teleport and uses the power to track down the person who murdered his mother.
• Don't you love it when studios throw the first few minutes of a film online and all they consist of are the opening credits? Hey, I'm all for a sneak peak of your film, but at least give me a nice, exciting scene. In saying that, Sony Pictures has been cool enough to debut the first three minutes of The Covenant over on the film's official website. Enjoy! [via Coming Soon]

My #1 favorite horror site, Bloody-Disgusting.com, is spending some solid time at Comic Con, and those bloodthirsty little kooks are reporting on every single horror-centric tidbit you could possibly imagine. In addition to their thorough obsession with Grind House, the BDboyz have also brought us the following news:

• A Saw 3 clip that seems more than a little Barker-esque. And another nasty poster. Coooool. Also, Saw 4 is almost certainly going to hit theaters next October. Yay.
  
• Wan & Whannell, creators of the original Saw, have their new flick, Dead Silence, almost finished.
• Feast (finally) hits DVD on October 17th. They better stick to the date.
• The trailer for Renny Harlin's The Covenant is now online.
• The House on Haunted Hill sequel we mentioned last week? Going direct-to-video.
• Lionsgate will release Ju-On: The Grudge 2 on DVD come October 10th. Strange coincidence: The Grudge 2 hits theaters on October 13th.
• Probably not anytime soon, but Sam Raimi assures us that the Evil Dead remake will happen eventually.
• Neil Marshall just dropped a juicy little teaser: The Descent 2 will be coming soon...

Who knew a comics convention would yield so much cinematic splatter? That's it: Next year, it's Comic Con for Weinberg.

As Karina reported last fall, Warner Brothers thinks it's a brilliant idea to have Roland Emmerich direct an epic about "three stages in the development of primitive man." Huh? Sorry, I dozed off for a second there. Entitled 10,000 B.C., the movie "centers on a young tribal mammoth hunter at the dawn of modern man as he embarks on an epic journey through uncharted territory to secure the future of his dying tribe." Though Emmerich originally insisted that his cast was going to be filled with total unknowns via open calls, he's instead cast Camilla Belle and Steven Strait, a pair of kids who Warner's fervently hopes are about to explode into megastardom.

After playing small roles in about a billion things (including Poison Ivy II and an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger), Belle recently starred in the When a Stranger Calls remake. Strait, an ex-model (gee, that's a great start) who has made very few screen appearances, is currently filming Renny Harlin's The Covenant, in which he co-stars. Talented or not, rest assured that both of them will look damn good in torn animal skins. Really, isn't that all that matters?