After the last several weeks of lackluster movie sales, the box office got a significant boost by the surprisingly high debut of the remake of The Karate Kid starring Jaden Smith and Jackie Chan.  At least we were surprised.  Internally, we thought that it would debut in the mid-20 million dollar range (as the A-Team remake did), so we were quite shocked to see an extremely healthy $55.6 million domestic open.  If this does well overseas, this could be the breakout hit of the summer.  As it is, assuming attendance doesn't drop drastically, it appears that the younger Mr. Smith will be on his way to joining his father as summer blockbuster king.  Even better is that the film was made on a production budget of $40 million, which means that it will definitely turn a profit based on box office receipts alone.  Expect pre-production on the sequel to begin immediately.

In contrast, the news for the remake of The A-Team was all bad.  Not only did it manage an unimpressive $25 million debut, but it was made on a production budget of $110 million.  This means that it would need to gross $220 million just to break even on box office sales.  If the executive who greenlit this bomb is still working at Fox, he or she should perhaps start updating his or her résumé. 

Two other movies are showing interesting trends at the box office, and those are The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Sex and the City 2.  What's interesting is that while neither of these movies is exactly setting the domestic box office on fire, they are performing spectacularly well overseas.  In addition to the ho-hum $72 million domestic take of Persia, it has also grossed a staggering $190 million in foreign markets for a worldwide total approaching $300 million.  On the distaff side, Sex and the City 2 has proven to be a disappointment locally and may not even reach $100 million, but outside the US and Canada, the gals have hauled in an additional $132 million.  This very much mirrors the behavior of the first film where a full 64% of its worldwide gross came from foreign markets.

As for the four movies that opened last week, none of them proved to have any holdover with each dropping about 50%.  Splicers, however, dropped a full 60%, which is normal for a horror genre flick that fails to catch on with the larger audience.  Shrek Forever After, meanwhile, was finally kicked out of the top spot after three weeks, but is still holding on relatively well, down a relatively modest 38% in its fourth weekend.  However, next week's premiere of Toy Story 3 will change that dramatically as Shrek may lose many of the 3-D theaters it had in favor of the return of the old Pixar favorite.

Next week, in addition to the aforementioned Toy Story 3 comes the debut of the fourth comic book movie of the summer (after Kick-Ass, The Losers, and Iron Man), Jonah Hex.  Josh Brolin stars as the disfigured bounty hunter cowboy from the American Old West.  Megan Fox, recently fired from the Transformers franchise co-stars.  We don't think the race will even be close between the two.  The real story is how The Karate Kid will fare as the family audience undoubtedly flocks to see the return of Woody and Buzz Lightyear.

Also, in this lackluster summer, can Toy Story 3 muster enough muscle to secure an opening weekend in excess of $100 million?  We'll find out next week at this time.

Here are the domestic box office actuals for the weekend of June 11-13, 2010: