The actuals from the extended four-day weekend are in (as July 4th was extended into Monday by most businesses), and, to no one's surprise, the latest chapter in the Twilight franchise, Eclipse, easily sank its fangs into the number one spot.  While not quite as good a debut as the previous installment, New Moon, this is still a fantastic achievement for Summit Entertainment who produces these movies relatively on the cheap.  Eclipse's production budget was just under $70 million, meaning that it has already gotten out of the red, so to speak, and is in solid profit-making territory.  Add in another $100+ million gross from foreign markets, and the success is even more impressive.  The news gets even better for Summit as Letters to Juliet vaults back into the top 12 after being at number 18 last week.  The film is playing on fewer screens as compared to last week, so its huge increase in box office could likely be attributed to its being shown on the discount theater circuit, which attracts larger crowds of casual movie fans.

Another impressive debut came from Paramount's The Last Airbender, based on the Nickelodeon American-anime series.  The flick, directed by M. Night Shyalaman, has raked in about $70 million since its Thursday debut and has seemingly overcome some of the most brutal reviews in recent movie history.  It will be interesting to see how it holds up in its second weekend, but for now it's a solid debut for Shyamalan who desperately needed a comeback after his last couple of movies failed at the box office.

It should be noted that the percentage changes from last week in the table below are lower than they ordinarily would have been because we are comparing a four-day weekend against a three-day.  For example, just comparing the Friday-through-Sunday frame of this weekend to last weekend, Toy Story 3's drop would have been 49% rather than the 27.4% shown below.

This Friday's new releases include Predators, the newest entry in the Predator franchise, and Despicable Me, the latest CGI-animated flick from Universal Pictures whose previous CGI entries, The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie and The Tale of Despereaux both flopped at the box office in 2008.

Here are the box office actuals for the weekend of July 2-5, 2010: