In spite of last week's debut of the latest Twilight flick, this weekend's business actually increased over last weekend by almost 7%.  That's likely due to the fact that Twilight opened on Wednesday and made a lot of its money before the weekend even started.  Still, holdovers from last weekend did not crash and burn (with one notable exception), and the two major releases debuted to solid opening numbers.

Despicable Me has given Universal Studios the animated hit it has been searching for courtesy of its distribution deal with new animation producer, Illumination Entertainment.  This was even more impressive considering the fact that Toy Story 3 is still playing quite well, raking in over $20 million in its fourth weekend.  Predators, the latest attempt to revive the franchise, scored an okay opening, but given that it was made on only a $40 million budget, it's already grossed about a third of what it needs to in order to break even.

On the other side of the coin, while many movies in the top 12 had acceptable drops from last weekend, including Adam Sandler's latest, Grown Ups, which had by far the smallest drop of the top 12, M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender crashed with the largest drop of the top 12 – almost 60%.  Looks like those awful reviews have caught up with it.  At this rate, the movie will top out at around $130 million domestically.

Next weekend is the debut of Inception, the highly-anticipated new film from Christopher Nolan, the director behind the blockbuster The Dark Knight.  It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, and the combination of star power, director pedigree, and thrilling trailers should make this a sizable hit.

But will it open at number one?  Don't count out The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Disney's live action adaptation inspired by the Mickey Mouse sequence from Fantasia.  It stars Nicholas Cage and is directed by John Turteltaub, who directed Cage in his twin National Treasure hits (also for Disney).  We suspect that Inception will take the top spot, but The Sorcerer's Apprentice, rated PG is clearly going for that all-powerful family audience, so it will be interesting to see if the family market is too crowded for yet another flick so soon after Toy Story and (just one week after) Despicable Me.

 Here are the box office actuals for the weekend of July 9-11, 2010: