Weekend Box-Office: July 9-11, 2010

WEEKEND BOX-OFFICE

Despicable
Me tops Predators…

Universal Pictures’ first foray into 3D animation
has already turned into a huge success, as DESPICABLE ME killed
its box-office competition this weekend, making $60M in its first
three days of release, which ain’t too shabby when you consider
that the film apparently only cost $70M to produce. So yeah, I
think it’s safe to assume that DESPICABLE YOU, the sequel,
will be greenlit any minute now (that’s not the real title, btw).
Go minions!!

The film that much of our audience checked
out and adored this weekend (more MOVIE FAN CENTRAL reviews HERE),
PREDATORS, also opened with decent numbers in 3rd place, with
about $25M, which also bodes well for that franchise, as the film
only cost about $40M to put together. Can you we expect a
PREDATORS 2? (although the PREDATOR movie titles will start to get
a little confusing at that point) For those scoring at home, the
original 1987 PREDATOR movie opened with $12M and ended up making
$60M when all was said and done.

Last week’s #1 movie, and the current "talk
of the town", ECLIPSE, managed only a drop of 49% from last
weekend massive opening, which is pretty impressive on its own,
since it shows that the film still has some "legs",
despite having already grossed $237M in the first 12 days of
release (it currently sits in 4th
place on the 2010 top-grossing movies list). Looks like it
will definitely surpass the franchise’s previous record-holder,
NEW MOON, which made $296M last year.

The rest of the top 10 also made quite a few
dollars, as the real summer movie season finally looks like it’s
taking off, as films like TOY STORY 3, GROWN UPS and even KNIGHT
& DAY only lost 27%, 14% and 25% of their audiences from last
week, respectively. Even M. Night Shyamalan’s mucho-maligned THE
LAST AIRBENDER has already surpassed the $100M mark, after only 10
days of release. Not bad for a movie that most everyone was
shitting on! I don’t think we’ll see any sequels anytime soon (as
Shyams seems to believe), but then again…stranger things
have happened in Hollywood (note the success of certain Pauly
Shore movies back in the early ’90s).

But let’s not forget to discuss one of the biggest
events of the weekend, which is that TOY STORY 3 became 1) the
highest-grossing movie of 2010 after only 4 weeks of release and
more importantly, 2) the highest-grossing Pixar movie of
all-time!! Who woulda guessed it! The film crossed the $340M
mark this past weekend, which puts it $1M ahead of 2003’s FINDING
NEMO. Congrats to all of the awesome people who work at Pixar.
Easily one of the most successful movie production houses of
all-time!

The two films to get knocked out of the top 10
this weekend included GET HIM TO THE GREEK ($60M) and SHREK
FOREVER AFTER ($233M) which despite making all that money, was the
least successful of all the SHREK films — SHREK: $267M,
SHREK 2: $441M, SHREK 3: $322M.

Next weekend sees the release of two major summer
releases including Nicolas Cage’s latest hairpiece in THE
SORCERER’S APPRENTICE (directed by Jon Turtletaub!!), which
opens on Wednesday, and the movie that we’ve all been waiting for
(seriously, no joke), Christopher Nolan’s awesome looking INCEPTION
starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Our editor-in-chief Mike Sampson saw
the film recently and awarded
it a 10/10. So how much $$$ do you think INCEPTION will make
next weekend? VOTE
HERE!!!

1. Despicable Me	$ 60.1 Million	NEW
2. Eclipse	$ 33.4 Million	$ 237 Million
3. Predators	$ 25.3 Million	NEW
4. Toy Story 3	$ 22 Million	$ 340.2 Million
5. The Last Airbender	$ 17.2 Million	$ 100.2 Million
6. Grown Ups	$ 16.4 Million	$ 111.3 Million
7. Knight & Day	$ 7.9 Million	$ 61.9 Million
8. The Karate Kid	$ 5.7 Million	$ 164.6 Million
9. The A-Team	$ 1.8 Million	$ 73.9 Million
10. Cyrus	$ 1.4 Million	$ 3.5 Million

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