The Friday box office report showed Tyler Perry and Lionsgate's Boo! A Madea Halloween close on the heels of the latest Dan Brown adaptation, Inferno, but not close enough that prognosticators were suggesting that it would win the weekend box office again. And yet, so it has come to pass! Madea inched past Inferno's $15 million with $16.7 million of its own.

Box office soothsayers presumed that Inferno would easily take in around $20-30 million in its opening weekend because of its cast and its previous box office pedigree. But as I mentioned yesterday, American interest in these movies has clearly flamed out. Overseas it's a different story (see more on that below), where Inferno opened #1 in China, and has already notched over $130 million among all international territories. That means that Sony isn't exactly licking their wounds over this one, especially since they slashed Inferno's budget from $150 million (the cost of Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code) in half.

But Inferno's weak performance is the second big box office bomb recently for director Ron Howard, who also helmed the overlong and overly dour In the Heart of the Sea. There was a time when a Ron Howard movie could do no wrong -- what kind of an era have we entered into?! Ironically, Howard's last studio movie to turn a profit was Angels & Demons.

As for the surprising success of Madea, maybe it's because of the Halloween weekend tie-in, or just that no one seemed to be at the movies this weekend (blame Halloween itself, or the World Series, or election fears, or any number of things). Madea's $16.7 million haul isn't exactly a barnstormer, but it definitely suggests that there will be many, many more Madea movies to come. What holidays are left? Arbor Day? National Cat Day? Expect them all to happen, people.

And now, some bonus overseas box office info: as is seemingly becoming increasingly common, major Hollywood movies are first opening internationally. This weekend's biggest example is Doctor Strange, which has notched $86 million in 33 territories, which is (roughly) a little less than half of the global movie marketplace. It has made the biggest splash in Korea so far, pulled in $7.6 million from IMAX, and was #1 in all but two of the countries where it launched (Lithuania and Finland, if you were curious).

Back to the U.S. charts: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back remains in third with $9.6 million, while The Accountant added $8.5 million to its total. Ouija: Origin of Evil filled out to the Top 5 with $7.1 million this weekend, while A24's likely Oscar contender Moonlight has been a surprising draw, garnering close to $1 million since its expansion to 36 screens.

Check out the full Weekend Top 10 below (via Box Office Mojo):