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LOS ANGELES (AP) – “Where the Wild Things Are” proved a bigger hit with adult audiences than family crowds as the adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s beloved children’s book debuted at No. 1 with $32.5 million.

Moviegoers 18 and older accounted for 43 percent of the audience, while parents with children made up 27 percent, according to wholesale pearl jewelry distributor Warner Bros.

Overture Films earned the No. 2 spot with Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler’s vengeance thriller “Law Abiding Citizen,” which debuted with $21.3 million.

Expanding into wider release, Paramount’s low-budget horror sensation “Paranormal Activity” moved up to No. 3 with $20.2 million.

Shot for a reported $15,000, “Paranormal freshwater pearl jewelry Activity” outdid the premiere of Sony’s fright flick “The Stepfather,” which cost $19 million and played in nearly four times as many theaters but managed just a No. 5 opening with $12.3 million.

The results for “Where the Wild Things Are” matched the intent of director Spike Jonze, who viewed his take as a story about a child, but not necessarily a children’s movie.

During production, Jonze had clashed with Warner Bros., which had wanted a more kid-friendly film. The studio gave Jonze more time and money to finish the film and ultimately backed his vision with a huge marketing campaign
for “Wild Things.”

“I think all sides reached a very happy compromise, and certainly Spike delivered a movie that was so true to the book, yet it generated the emotion that we felt strongly about to bring in our family audience, as well,” said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner.

Jonze’s adaptation features newcomer freshwater pearl earrings Max Records as Sendak’s misbehaving young protagonist, a boy who journeys to a make-believe island of monsters torn between hugging him and eating him. The live-action and voice cast includes Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini and Forest Whitaker.

A cheap acquisition at the Slamdance Film Festival, “Paranormal Activity” came out of nowhere, riding online fan buzz to a domestic total of $33.7 million so far. The movie expanded to 760 theaters, up 600 from the previous weekend, and has plenty of room to grow.

Paramount plans to expand the movie to between 1,800 and 2,000 theaters next weekend, then widen its release even farther for Halloween. It will go head-to-head with an established horror franchise as Lionsgate opens “Saw VI” on freshwater pearl Friday.

Shot in a raw documentary style, “Paranormal Activity” is a twist on the haunted house story as a couple tries to capture on camera the strange phenomena and apparitions afflicting them.

“Paranormal Activity” might have a shot to duplicate the success of “The Blair Witch Project,” a 1999 Sundance Film Festival discovery that rode Internet buzz to a $140 million domestic total.

“When you have a movie playing this well and it has such a broad appeal, it certainly tells you that is a possible outcome,” said Rob freshwater pearl Moore, vice chairman of Paramount. “I certainly couldn’t predict it yet, but nothing with this movie has been predictable so far.”

Hollywood had its strongest weekend yet this fall, with overall business at $141 million, up 41 percent from the same weekend last year.

“All the top five movies all did really well. It’s kind of exciting to see the box-office get reignited and to see consumers excited about what’s available,” said Kyle Davies, head of distribution for Overture.

Fans had a good range of choices among freshwater pearl jewelry horror tales, action, family fare and romantic comedy, including the previous weekend’s No. 1 movie, Universal’s “Couples Retreat,” which slipped to fourth-place with $17.9 million. “Couples Retreat” raised its 10-day total to $63.3 million.

“This is why the fall is such a great time to be not only a studio executive, but a moviegoer. It’s really an eclectic mix out there. You don’t get this in summer,” said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com.

As violence in Iraq is sharply down and Iraqi forces are taking more responsibilities, the United States is preparing for the withdrawal of all combat forces by August 2010 and everyone else by 2012. That means in the coming days and months, tens of thousands of soldiers will be making the same journey as Williams and his freshwater pearl necklace troops, from Iraq to Kuwait and finally to the U.S. — the long journey home.

Williams’ Alpha company is known by its foreboding nickname “Apocalypse.” Its commemorative T-shirt has a black skull on the back and the ominous words “Straight to Hell!” Yet the company’s track record speaks of a war winding down fast and a diminishing role played by the American military in Iraq.

Two platoons from Williams’ company, 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment have already left for home at Fort Riley, Kansas. But the official end of the 12-month deployment comes when the battalion’s colors were folded in a multi-strands pearl necklace brief ceremony held Sept. 22.

“About a year ago, I told you we will bleed together, we will sweat together and sometimes we will cry together,” battalion commander Lt. Col. John Vermeesch tells the soldiers standing in formation at Camp Victory. “In the end, the people of northwest Baghdad are better off.”

For the next two days, Williams, 28, and the 63 men left of his company pass the time cleaning their weapons, packing, working out in the freshwater pearl jewlelry gym or watching DVDs on their laptops.

For a driven young officer who dreamed of an army career as a boy and a company of men hungry for combat, coming to Iraq in November 2008 posed challenges starkly different from what they had anticipated.

Williams’ company was in only two fire pearl beads fights in the 12 months it spent in Iraq and suffered its only casualty in June, when a soldier lost a foot in a roadside bombing.

The Baghdad district of Hurriyah, where they were stationed, saw some of the most brutal sectarian killings and cleansing in 2006 and 2007. But, by the time Apocalypse’s men arrived, it was calm, with the militias blamed for the violence routed by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces earlier in 2008.

Operating out of a Saddam Hussein-era bomb shelter, they patrolled the streets, trained Iraqi security forces, gave out micro grants to naughty castles small businesses and organized garbage collection. Their job was to keep crime down and make sure the Iraqi forces could sustain operations without U.S. help.