Having long since disappeared from most territories The Mexican has made a late summer comeback with a wave of impressive international openings in several major European countries over the weekend (August 16-19). The romantic action comedy, which grossed $66.8m during its domestic run for DreamWorks SKG, opened in Germany and Switzerland on Thursday Aug 16 and Spain on Friday Aug 17.

The film, boasting the marquee pairing of megastars Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts ,claimed top spots in both Spain and Switzerland. In Spain, where it is distributed by Tri Pictures, the film took $1.4m from 303 screens for a strong screen average of $4,691. Switzerland saw the biggest screen average for the film in any of the three territories, where it took $362,161 from 53 screens for a massive average of $6,833.

In Germany, The Mexican faced strong competition where it had to compete against local favourite Der Schuh Des Manitu as well as the opening of French phenomenon Amelie. While Amelie had the best average of the weekend with $6,167, it had to settle for fifth position with $0.96m from 156 screens. Meanwhile, Der Schuh Des Manitu proved too powerful a draw its local territory and The Mexican was forced to make do with second place. Despite this the BVI distributed film, which is directed by Mousehunt's Gore Verbinski, opened with a powerful $2.4m from 550 screens, an average of $4,330.

20th Century Fox and Tim Burton's re-imagining of Planet Of The Apes also saw several strong openings. Taking top spots in the UK ($7.9m), Australia ($2.9m) and Finland ($262,751) the film, which has already grossed $161.2m domestically, looks set to perform well internationally as well. The film has already grossed more than $78m in the international market with France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain still to receive it.