The Trailer Park Boys still know how to attract a crowd, as the sequel to their first feature grossed $1.4 million over three days at the box office for Alliance Films, good for the number-three spot in Canada overall.

Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day, which opened on 200 screens, matched the first three days of the original film, which debuted over the Thanksgiving long weekend in 2006 with $1.6 million. (It went on to earn over $4 million in total.)

‘When you compare just the frame-to-frame — so Friday, Saturday and Sunday — it’s almost dollar-for-dollar the same opening. It’s amazing considering it’s been off-air for a while,’ Mark Slone, SVP of Alliance Films, tells Playback Daily.

Countdown to Liquor Day finished just behind Disney’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and the Bruce Willis-starrer Surrogates, and ahead of MGM’s new release Fame — with a per-screen average of roughly $7,000.

‘With sequels you get a certain drop-off most of the time, where it’s just never the same excitement as with the first film, but in this case it very much held up,’ notes Slone, who attributes the strong numbers to pent-up demand for the Trailer Park Boys.

‘We never knew, is there a waning interest because it’s been off the air, or is there build-up demand where people missed the Trailer Park Boys,’ he adds. The TV series aired for seven seasons on Showcase, and was not renewed last year.

Though he did not disclose the amount spent on the marketing campaign, Slone says Alliance ‘spared no expense in making sure that the film was perceived in a very competitive marketplace.’

Countdown to Liquor Day follows Ricky, Julian and Bubbles — played by Robb Wells, John Paul Tremblay and Mike Smith — as they vow to clean up their act upon their release from jail, though trouble ensues when they encounter a changed man in trailer park supervisor Jim Lahey (John Dunsworth).

The film, which recently opened the Atlantic Film Festival, will hold all of its screens going into the second week.