INTRODUCING BEYONCÉ KNOWLES, BANKABLE MOVIE STAR

Beyoncé Knowles has made the transition from pop star to movie star in dramatic fashion. Obsessed, her first top-of-the-bill role, pairing her with The Wire’s Idris Elba, opened as the top weekend movie with a $28.5 million box office. The psycho femme fatale in the Sony Screen Gems thriller is played by Ali Larter of Heroes.

While the thematic precedent here is Fatal Attraction, the closest parallel in terms of the music-to-movies transition is 1992’s The Bodyguard, which propelled Whitney Houston from the top of the charts to the upper reaches of the showbiz firmament.

Where the comparison falls apart is in the soundtrack area. Fueled by Whitney’s intimate-to-epic take on the Dolly Parton ballad “I Will Always Love You,” the soundtrack album went on to become the biggest of all time.

By contrast, a Google search for an Obsessed soundtrack album reveals no results whatsoever. Beyoncé doesn’t sing in the film, but “Smashed Into You” from her 2008 hit album I Am…Sasha Fierce (Music World/Columbia) plays over the end titles, which will likely provide a jolt to sales of that LP.

Although she’d never previously been called on to drive a movie with her star power, Beyoncé is far from a neophyte as an actress. She made her big-screen debut in 2002’s Austin Powers in Goldmember to generally positive reviews. Since then, she’s appeared in The Fighting Temptations (2003), The Pink Panther (2006) and Dreamgirls (2006) before playing Etta James in last year’s Cadillac Records.

So far this year, despite (or perhaps because of) the nation’s economic woes, movie receipts are running at a record pace, with year-to-date revenues at $3.1 billion, up 17.4% over last year, while attendance is 15.7% ahead of last year at this time.

Weekend Box Office
1. Obsessed, $28.5 million.
2. 17 Again, $11.7 million.
3. Fighting, $11.4 million.
4. The Soloist, $9.7 million.
5. Earth, $8.6 million.
6. Monsters vs. Aliens, $8.5 million.
7. State of Play, $6.9 million.
8. Hannah Montana: The Movie, $6.4 million.
9. Fast & Furious, $6.1 million.
10. Crank: High Voltage, $2.4 million.

The Top 10 films recorded an estimated $101 million in ticket sales, up about 33% from the same period last year, according to Screenline. Overall revenues were at about $112 million, up about 24% from the same weekend last year, according to stats from Media by Numbers.