`WATERBOY' CARRIES 2ND WEEK AT TOP.

Byline: Dave McNary Daily News Staff Writer

Adam Sandler's ``The Waterboy'' scored its second consecutive victory at the nation's multiplexes with an impressive $25.2 million at 2,675 theaters to dominate a robust weekend at the nation's box office during Friday-Sunday, studio sources said Sunday.

The results gave the football comedy nearly $80 million after 10 days, ensuring the Disney release will hit the $100 million mark next weekend. Studio marketing executive Chuck Viane noted the decline from the opening weekend was only 36 percent, showing that ``The Waterboy'' has created broad appeal beyond its core audience of young males.

``It's really blossomed and is attracting all demographics,'' Viane said. ``We're getting kids that have seen it two and three times already.''

``The Waterboy,'' costing a mere $19 million, will soon become the 11th film to top the $100 million milestone this year. Its unexpected success lifted the overall weekend to $103 million, 22 percent ahead of the same weekend last year, and underscored the industry's continued powerful performance with year-to-date grosses over $5.6 billion and 10 percent ahead of last year's pace.

``The business is just barreling along,'' said analyst Arthur Rockwell of Drake & Co. ``It's being bailed out by these very successful genre movies. That's what the movie business is all about - if you deliver the goods you've promised, you can make a lot of money.''

Robert Bucksbaum, president of the Reel Source forecasting service, has upgraded his estimate of the final domestic gross for ``The Waterboy'' to $150 million. ``People love this movie,'' he said.

Also performing respectably were two new entries - Sony's slasher sequel ``I Still Know What You Did Last Summer'' and Universal's Brad Pitt drama-comedy ``Meet Joe Black.'' Moviegoers ignored the mostly negative notices with ``I Still Know'' taking $17.5 million at 2,443 theaters and ``Joe'' pulling in $15 million at 2,500 sites.

Bucksbaum said ``I Still Know'' will likely gross $60 million overall, $12 million shy of the original, while ``Meet Joe Black'' could hit $75 million. He noted that the critics' chief complaint about ``Joe'' - its running time of nearly three hours - carried little weight with patrons.

``People like the movie and they don't realize it's three hours long,'' Bucksbaum said. ``If you're paying $8 for a movie, you want to get your money's worth.''

Rockwell said ``Meet Joe Black,'' in which Pitt portrays the Grim Reaper falling in love, is ``an adequate success story,'' given its relatively expensive reported cost of $75 million. ``It's a respectable opening, because this is a difficult film to market,'' he added. ``It's not going to make much money for the studio.''

The second weekend of ``The Siege'' came in fourth with $8.1 million at 2,579 theaters as the thriller lost 42 percent of its opening weekend audience. 20th Century Fox, which had been the hottest studio over the summer, is likely to lose money on the $70 million project, now with $26.3 million after 10 days.

DreamWorks' seventh weekend of ``Antz'' finished fifth with $4.2 million at 2,351 screens and has now topped $81 million overall. The computer-animated comedy, rushed out to beat Disney's ``A Bug's Life,'' edged New Line's fourth weekend of ``Pleasantville'' with $4.1 million at 1,773 sites and Disney's unimpressive opening of family comedy ``I'll Be Home For Christmas,'' starring Jonathan Taylor Thomas, with $4 million at 1,759 theaters.

Bucksbaum said Thomas' box office appeal has diminished as the ``Home Improvement'' star portrays a college student. ``He's at an awkward age because most young teen-age girls prefer someone older like Leonardo DiCaprio,'' he noted. ``It's a hard transition for a child star to make.''

Final results for this weekend will be released today.

Top movies

Here are estimated grosses at North American theaters for Friday through Sunday:

1. ``The Waterboy,'' $25.2 million.

2. ``I Still Know What You Did Last Summer,'' $17.5 million.

3. ``Meet Joe Black,'' $15 million.

4. ``The Siege,'' $8.1 million.

5. ``Antz,'' $4.2 million.

6. ``Pleasantville,'' $4.1 million.

7. ``I'll Be Home for Christmas,'' $4 million.

8. ``The Wizard of Oz,'' $3.3 million.

9. ``Living Out Loud,'' $2.7 million.

10. ``Rush Hour,'' $2 million.

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