Americans turned out in force to see "Borat," the long-awaited mock documentary starring Sacha Baron Cohen as a boorish Kazakh journalist who offends everyone in sight while touring the U.S. seeking cultural enlightenment and Pamela Anderson.
As the wacky Borat himself might say: Why not? They like!
The movie topped the weekend box office with record-setting ticket sales of $26.4 million in the U.S. and Canada at only 837 theaters, according to estimates Sunday from 20th Century Fox.
"Borat" broke the box-office record for a movie opening at fewer than 1,000 locations. It bested Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which opened at $23.9 million in 2004.
"It was like a rock concert atmosphere -- pandemonium," said "Borat" producer Jay Roach, who attended three sold-out shows in Hollywood and West L.A. on Friday night.
"During the naked wrestling scene, people were thrashing around and laughing so hard they couldn't breathe," he said.
Walt Disney Co.'s "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause," which most prerelease consumer surveys had indicated would finish first, came in at No. 2 with an estimated gross of $20 million.
The huge haul for "Borat" was especially surprising given Fox's recent decision to sharply scale back the release in response to surveys showing limited awareness of the film.
The R-rated movie, whose full title is "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," averaged $31,511 per theater.
So-called tracking surveys had pointed to an opening in the $15-million range. But they failed to capture the intensity of the "Borat" phenomenon stoked by enthusiastic screening audiences and a carefully scripted publicity campaign that started in the spring, Roach said.
"It's amazing that tracking is so important to the industry when it's frequently way off," Roach said.
"The 'Borat' virus has been out there spreading, but not among the people who answer the surveys," he added.
Since May, Cohen has been appearing only in character as Borat Sagdiyev, and entertainment journalists have obligingly played along with the gag.
During the Cannes Film Festival, they photographed him at the beach in what would become his trademark green thong bikini alongside two models. This fall they followed him from the Kazakh Embassy in Washington to the White House gates, where he tried to invite "Premier George Walter Bush" to a screening.
