Saw IV proved to be just the trick for the box office on the weekend before Halloween as the horror sequel debuted with an estimated $32.1 million, down only slightly from Saw III's $33.6 million. Revenue from other films on theater marquees this past weekend could not have been regarded as much of a treat, with total ticket sales falling below last year's pace for the sixth week in a row. In fact the total gross for the Halloween weekend, amounting to $86.1 million, was the worst in ten years. In second place, the Steve Carell flick Dan in Real Life, which drew so-so reviews on Friday, drew so-so business over the weekend as it tallied up $12.1 million in ticket sales. Third place went to Sony's vampire movie, 30 Days of Night which dropped 58 percent to $6.7 million in its second week. If there was another bright spot on the box-office report, it was the continued strong performance of Disney's The Game Plan, which dropped only 23 percent in its fifth weekend to about $6.3 million and bring its total to $77.1 million -- the best of any film thus far this season. Particularly disappointing may have been the performance of Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited as it widened its release to nearly 700 theaters but managed to bring in just $1.7 million, Anderson's worst showing. Among limited releases, Sidney Lumet's Before the Devil Knows You're Dead was very much alive with an estimated $73,500 take at just two theaters.

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations: 1. Saw IV, $32.1 million; 2. Dan in Real Life, $12.1 million; 3. 30 Days of Night, $6.7 million; 4. The Game Plan, $6.3 million; 5. Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, $5.7 million; 6. Michael Clayton, $5 million; 7. Gone Baby Gone, $3.9 million; 8. The Comebacks, $3.45 million; 9. We Own the Night, $3.4 million; 10. Tim Burton's the Nightmare Before Christmas, $3.35 million.

Continuing to defy analysts' predictions, Disney's Ratatouille remained the No. 1 film at the overseas box office for the fourth weekend in a row earning $21.9 million to bring its overseas gross to $346.8 million. Together with its domestic take, it has now taken in a total of $552 million worldwide.

William Shatner would like to go where one man has gone before -- himself. In interviews over the weekend Shatner expressed disbelief that he has not been cast in the forthcoming Star Trek sequel, although his original co-star, Leonard Nimoy, has been. The London Daily Mail quoted him as saying, "I can't believe it, I'm not in the movie at all. Leonard, God bless his heart, is in, but not me. I thought, 'What a decision to make, ' since it obviously is a decision not to make use of the popularity I have to ensure the movie has good box office figures. It didn't seem to be a wise business decision."

Although the London Times is reporting that Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons is expected to announce his decision to step down within the next week, other media journalists are expressing skepticism. At least two writers have observed that Parsons will be attending the Fortune Global Conference in India and that it is not likely that he would announce his exit during such an event.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences may have ruled that Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit is ineligible for Oscar consideration since more than half its dialogue is in English, but that didn't prevent the film from winning the top Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix at the 29th Tokyo Film Festival on Sunday. Producers of the film, about a group of Egyptian police stranded in Israel, and produced by the Israeli studio July August Productions, will also receive a $50,000 cash award. The festival also awarded Singapore Dreaming, a film about how a family is affected when the patriarch wins the national lottery, its Asian-Middle Eastern film award. Meanwhile, the Jason Reitman comedy Juno won the top prize at the Rome Film Festival on Saturday.

Baseball fans tuned in to Fox Sunday night to see whether the Boston Red Sox could repeat the impossible and defy its "curse" for a second year and win the World Series. They did -- in four straight games, which represented good and bad news for Fox. The good news was that ratings for the Series overwhelmed the competition over the four days of Boston's sweep of the Colorado Rockies. The bad news was that the series lasted only four nights -- knocking out potential advertising revenue from additional games. Sunday night's finale averaged a 13.9 rating and a 21 share in the overnights from 8:30 to 11:00 p.m. (The pre-game show at 8:00 p.m. posted a 9.8/16.) The only show that could be regarded as a contender against the Series Sunday was ABC's Desperate Housewives, which drew an 11.2/17.

Harvey Keitel is the seemingly unlikely choice to play Jerry Springer in a forthcoming production of Jerry Springer: The Opera in Concert, to be presented at New York's Carnegie Hall on Jan. 29 and 30, according to the New York Times. The newspaper said that if the two performances prove to be successful, the producers will consider staging it on Broadway. The "opera" -- a spoof of the U.S. television show -- was originally performed on stage in the U.K. When it also aired on the BBC two years ago, it generated an uproar, as conservative Christian groups complained that license fees collected from viewers should not be used to underwrite blasphemy. But in a letter-to-the-editor appear in the London Evening Standard, one viewer responded: "If you want to see what happens when television is censored to stop causing offense just go to America -- most of their television is so sanitized that it is unwatchable."

Although the announcement that NBC Universal and News Corp were launching a joint Internet venture named Hulu was initially greeted with skepticism and even derision, advance reviews of the enterprise, which officially goes online today (Monday), have been surprisingly good, the Los Angeles Times observed today. Analysts have been particularly impressed with the two media companies' willingness to allow scenes from their television shows to be excerpted and embedded in discussion blogs. James McQuivey, an analyst for Forrester Research, told the newspaper: "No one in the industry has taken that step. ... I doubted they had the political will." Commenting on the fact that Hulu will also be available on Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft's MSN and additional hosting sites, another analyst, Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media, remarked similarly: "I really am impressed that NBC have been aggressive enough to permit this super-distribution of their copyrighted content. ... I had assumed the networks would be slow to adapt."

New intramural fighting has broken out between the Writers Guild of America and the Directors Guild of America over the WGA's strike rules. Like the Screen Actors Guild the DGA told its members last week that they must observe the no-strike clause in their contracts with producers, although the members were encouraged to participate in picketing in their off-hours. The WGA then responded that hyphenate writer-directors who continue to perform "writing services" on TV shows will be subject to union disciplinary action. The DGA responded: "It is an essential element of our basic agreement that the guild not only refrain from striking during the term of the basic agreement, but also that the guild assure employers that our members will continue to perform DGA-covered services during the term of the basic agreement." A strike could begin as early as next Thursday, November 1.