With Universal Pictures' remake of "Dawn of the Dead" -- which opened last weekend to a powerful $26.7 million -- likely to exhibit a typical 50% horror film falloff, the door is open for a new occupant in the top spot. [...] after four weekends when R-rated films held the top spot, the kid audience will probably return en masse to make Warner Bros. The sequel about a chatty pooch and the misfit collection of humans who join together to fight all manner of CG monsters is once again directed by Raja Gosnell and reunites the cast headed by Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Linda Cardellini and Matthew Lillard.

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