Business Notes MOVIES

Talk about boffo box office. Now showing in 2,327 theaters in the U.S., Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the biggest-opening blockbuster of all time. The third in the series of cliff-hanging tales directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Harrison Ford, Crusade has been breaking records since it made its debut May 24. The film accounted for more than half of all the movie tickets sold in the U.S. over Memorial Day weekend. Fans paid $11.2 million to see it on May 27 alone, the biggest one-day take ever scored by a movie, and shelled out an unprecedented $50.2 million the first week. Since that is about what the film cost to make, Indy has struck another platinum mine.