With Hurricane Sandy bearing down on the East Coast, a perfect storm of indifference hit the domestic box office. Blame it on the weather or on a weak crop of new studio releases, the outcome is the same: a slow weekend that fell behind 2011 by more than 10%. Only Argo found a silver lining in the storm, pulling into first place after two weeks in theatres. As for Cloud Atlas – the most closely watched newcomer of the frame – the forecast is a little, um, cloudy.

With four new wide releases, you’d think the box office would be primed to close out October with another strong weekend. You’d be wrong. The prospects for the four newbies – including Cloud Atlas and Silent Hill: Revelation 3D – looked shaky even before the so-called ‘Frankenstorm’ trained its eye on America’s East Coast. Now, a combination of poor Cinemascores and Hurricane hysteria seems poised to put Argo on top with one of the lowest first-place wins since September. On its third Friday in theatres, Argo edged out Silent Hill 2 and Cloud Atlas for first with an estimated $4 million. The Ben Affleck drama is expected to stay on top (for its first weekend win) while Silent Hill falls to number four. That means that Cloud Atlas, the epic drama co-directed by the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer, should move into second place with close to $10 million – $3 million under initial projections. If the Cloud Atlas debut seems disappointing, however, it could have been worse. Despite a big release in 3,014 locations, Paramount’s Fun Size just missed Friday’s top ten with its estimate of $1.3 million. Fox’s Chasing Mavericks, with Gerard Butler, fared even worse: twelfth place on Friday with $1 million from 2,002 runs.

Cloud Atlas, the first movie to be released by the Wachowski Siblings since 2008′s Speed Racer, now has an official domestic release date of October 26th, 2012.  The movie will open to international territories in early 2013.  The story, adapted from David Mitchell’s best-selling book by the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), explores how a person’s actions impact lives across time and space.  Cloud Atlas stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon and Hugh Grant. Hit the jump to read the press release.

We knew that the Wachowski Siblings/Tom Tykwer’s adaptation of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas would be a little crazy.  We knew that the actors would be playing multiple characters.  But in a recent interview with Vulture, cast member Ben Whishaw reveals how crazy it’s going to get.  Whishaw tells Vulture, “Everyone in the cast is playing at least three parts, some big and some small… Everybody’s swapping race and gender, so it’s very ambitious and quite fun.”  For his parts, Whishaw is playing “Frobisher in the thirties; a female American in the seventies, in the Luisa Rey section; and a smallish role, where I’m basically an extra, in a modern-day nursing home, in the Timothy Cavendish section.”  For those unfamiliar with the book, it takes six nested stories across different locales and eras.  Folks who have read the novel say that it’s going to be a tough adaptation but that this approach may be the best way to do it.

However it turns out, I like the ambition although it’s tough to swap genders in a movie and not have it come off as comedic or to swap race and not have it come off as offensive.  Hit the jump for a synopsis of the novel.  Cloud Atlas also stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Broadbent, and Susan Sarandon.