That’s a killer debut, Denzel Washington.

The Equalizer, an update of the 1980s TV drama with Washington as a cinematic vigilante, took out the competition with a $35 million opening weekend, according to studio estimates from ticket sales firm Rentrak.

It’s not only one of the Oscar-nominated actor’s top bows — behind 2007’s American Gangster ($43.6 million) and 2012’s Safe House ($40.1 million) — but also ranks first for his Training Day director Antoine Fuqua.

“Denzel is just so charismatic, no matter how mean spirited or heroic or flawed,” says says Rentrak’s Paul Dergarabedian. “He brings such a humanity to every performance. He’s the very definition of a movie star.”

The Equalizer continues to cement Washington as one of Hollywood’s most consistently bankable stars in a career that dates to the early 1980s, according to Dergarabedian.

“To be sitting here three decades on and have this actor still resonating with audiences as strongly if not strongerthan ever with audiences, it’s a testament to his longevity and his smart selection of films,” he says. “And he’s done it in a very non-showy way. He lets the work speak for itself, and I think audiences like that — they respect it and they respect him for it.”

Last week’s champ The Maze Runner raced to No. 2 with $17.5 million — the sequel The Scorch Trials is already scheduled for next year.

The 46% drop from its opening weekend, which is solid for any film and impressive for a young-adult project, speaks to how the movie is playing well outside of its teen demographic, says Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. “This shows it’s going to have some staying power.”

The underground beasts of The Boxtrolls couldn’t surface at the top of the box-office charts, yet they still managed $17.25 million for third place — the biggest opening yet for Laika, the Portland, Ore. animation studio that also produced Coralineand ParaNorman.

“The craftsmanship up there is just unreal,” says Jim Orr, president of distribution for Focus Features.

The opening was actually a little bit above expectations, he adds. “We are really pleased. We think it’s going to end up legging out through the fall very nicely.”

Laika’s stop-motion style leads to each movie taking a while to make, but that labor of love “pays off every time for them,” Dergarabedian says. “They’re not chasing $50 million weekends. What they’re doing is creating prestige projects for families that elevate this kind of animation to a whole new level.”

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SOURCE: USA Today – Brian Truitt