This weekend earnings were slim at the U.S. box office, with the leader – 'Lakeview Terrace,' a drama starring Samuel L. Jackson as a bad cop terrorizing his neighbours – raking in a modest $15.6 million over its first three days.

The movie, which sets Jackson as Abel Turner, a neighborhood cop who harries an interracial couple was screened in 2,464 theatres, and was produced for $20 million by Sony branch Screen Gems and Overbrook Entertainment.

Lakeview terrace dethroned the previous weekend’s No.1, a spy comedy staring Brad Pitt and George Clooney, titled ‘Burn After Reading’ and produced by the Coen Brothers. The film slipped to second place with $11.3 million.

Lionsgate Films’ ‘My Best Friend’s Girl’, which was predicted to be this weekend’s No.1 hit, underperformed with $8.3 million gross at launch, and could have done better, according to Lionsgate expectations.

Another title on the top-ten list this weekend was the independent Exodus Film Group’s ‘Igor’, a PG-rated animation film about the stock mad scientist’s hunchbacked assistant Igor. The movie, which was produced for $25 million, made $8 million on opening, a pleasing start according to producers.

Debuting at eighth place this weekend is the comedy 'Ghost Town,' starring British comedian Ricky Gervais in his first major Hollywood role; Gervais is better-known for co-creating the British comedy ‘The Office’. The movie casts Gervais as a misanthropic dentist who after having a near-death experience starts seeing ghosts that promptly begin to bother him into running errands for them. The DreamWorks Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment film earned $5.2 million on its debut weekend and was shown across 1,505 screens.

All-in-all, in spite of slim pickings, this weekend features a variety of films for a wide audience, a bother that not much audience is there to enjoy them then.