Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar, who features in low-budget horror film “The Grudge”, collected the best box-office receipts in the North America

Moviegoers vote in Gellar, hold `Grudge` against `Surviving` Affleck

Sarah Michelle Gellar showed her cool hand on Halloween with a $40 million victory, when another new opener, Surviving Christmas, with Ben Affleck and James Gandolfini, only scraped a poor $4.5 milion.

The Grudge, Gellar's low-budget horror movie, turned out to be the most successful film for the Northern American movie-goers who expressed their full approval spending $40 million on tickets, according to the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. This remake of a Japanese chiller, à la The Ring, made its first appearance on Friday-Sunday. The Grudge was produced by the horror outfit created by Spider-Man filmmaker Sam Raimi, who got his start with the cult fright flick The Evil Dead.

The movie performed the third-biggest October opening ever, behind Scary Movie 3 ($48.1 million) and Shark Tale ($47.6 million). But the animated Shark Tale, the top movie for three straight weekends, finally slipped to the second place with $14.3 million, lifting its total to $136.9 million.

Famous poker guru Ben Affleck featuring in Surviving Christmas comedy has become No. 7 winning just $4.5 million in its opening weekend. These results seem to be extremely weak if compare them with Affleck’s striking win in poker. He took home $365,400 at California State poker Championship, leaving behind 90 skilful poker professionals.

According to Eonline.com, Affleck’s Surviving Christmas has started slow but it has chances to attract more moviegoers.  But the recent film followed his latest Gigli ($6.1 million), the big-budget Paycheck ($53.8 million) and the long-delayed Jersey Girl ($25.3 million).

However, Mercurynews.com reported, that Surviving Christmas, featuring Affleck as a lonely guy who hires a pretend family for the holidays, did barely better than Affleck's notorious 2003 bomb Gigli, which had a $3.8 million opening weekend.

"It is a little early, but people would accept Christmas in October if it had been a really good movie," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. "I don't think it was the release date. I think it was the critical panning."

The other top movies are Shall We Dance? ($8.6 million), Friday Night Lights ($7 million), Team America: World Police ($6.6 million), Ladder (49, $5.4 million), surpassing Taxi, The Forgotten and I Heart Huckabees.