'Puss' tops weekend B.O.

'Puss in Boots'"Puss in Boots" needed a bigger pair of knee-highs to trek through the recent mucky B.O. market.The Paramount-DreamWorks Animation toon debuted with $34 million, enough to win the domestic box office, but unable to reverse a malaise among moviegoers.B.O. pundits thought "Puss," which earned a soft 51% of its opening from 3D, would benefit more from a five-week gap in the family market ("Dolphin Tale" was the last family-targeted film to bow on Sept. 23). Though Imax, usually a fan-boy driven format, contributed a solid 7% of the total domestic opening for "Puss," with $3.2 million globally.It's not clear how much Halloween weekend affected the toon's opening, since the holiday falls on a Monday this year. But "Puss" did narrowly beat the holiday's previous best opener, "Saw III," which debuted at $33.6 million in 2006.Twentieth Century Fox's high-concept actioner "In Time" bowed in line with expectations, grossing an estimated $12 million through Sunday, while the weekend's other wide release, FilmDistrict's "The Rum Diary," underperformed with $5 million.Proving a smart move for Sony, meanwhile, the studio's scaled-back release of "Anonymous" resulted in a fine opening per-screen average of $3,774, especially considering the film opened at a still-aggressive (for a limited release) 265 Stateside locations. Based on soft early tracking, Sony decided late in the game to go limited with "Anonymous," instead of the film's expected wide release.Par's specialty pic "Like Crazy," distribbed via the studio's Par Vantage label, came out strong with an estimated weekend gross of $120,000 from four locations, which yielded a $30,000 per-screen average. Contact Andrew Stewart at andrew.stewart@variety.com