April 8, 2013 - 15:49 AMT
James McAvoy’s “Trance” crime thriller starts strong at box office

Danny Boyle’s kinky crime thriller “Trance” led a very strong weekend at the specialty box office. It took in $136,103 from four screens in its debut for Fox Searchlight, an average $34,026 per screen, TheWrap said.

Meanwhile, Shane Carruth’s “Upstream Color,” the writer-director’s follow up to “Primer,” brought in $31,500 in its debut at New York’s IFC Center. Robert Redford’s ”The Company You Keep” opened with $146,058 from five theaters, a strong $29,212 per screen average for Fox Searchlight. And "Place Beyond the Pines" played strongly in its second-week expansion for Focus Features.

The R-rated “Trance” is a violent, sexually explicit and mind-bending thriller about an art dealer (James McAvoy), a thief (Vincent Cassell) and a hypnotist (Rosario Dawson) who tries to retrieve McAvoy’s memories.