To no one's surprise, Inception opened strongly and marked a career best first weekend for its star, Leonardo DiCaprio. A dense storyline starring lots of well-dressed people proved to be a hit with audiences even if they didn't actually understand it. Reviews have been stellar, and audience intra-week attendance has been good, so it's quite possible that Inception could log another weekend in the top spot. It's main competition is the new Angelina Jolie action flick, Salt, which seems to be a question mark in terms of how well it will open. Previous Jolie actioners such as Wanted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith have each opened north of $50 million, but Salt's deliberately ambiguous marketing campaign and lack of a clear hook may prove to be this film's undoing come Friday.
This past weekend's other debut, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, debuted way beneath expectations, but, as we said last week, right now there are a plethora of family films to choose from that are still performing strongly, so we can see why Apprentice was the odd man out. With a $150 million production budget, things are not looking good right now. Summer movies tend to open big or not at all, so it's quite possible that this won't even hit the $100 million mark.
Among last week's debuts, Despicable Me is holding on nicely, while Predators lost more than 70% of its audience, and will likely drop out of the top 12 in another weekend or two.
Beyond Salt, next weekend's other wide debut is the Selena Gomez family flick, Ramona and Beezus, which we're not expecting to make all that much of an impact.
Here are the box office actuals for the weekend of July 16-18, 2010:
|
Title |
Weekend Gross
(US+Canada)
|
change from
last week
|
Total Gross
|
1 |
Inception
(Warner Bros.)
|
$62,785,337 |
debut |
$62,785,337 |
2 |
Despicable Me
(Universal)
|
$32,803,660 |
-41.8% |
$118,434,555 |
3 |
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
(Disney)
|
$17,619,622 |
debut |
$24,708,059 |
4 |
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
(Summit Entertainment)
|
$13,420,480 |
-57.7% |
$264,791,897 |
5 |
Toy Story 3
(Disney-Pixar)
|
$11,998,276 |
-42.9% |
$362,965,378 |
6 |
Grown Ups
(Sony Pictures)
|
$9,911,016 |
-37.3% |
$129,165,357 |
7 |
The Last Airbender
(Paramount)
|
$7,755,153 |
-53.4% |
$115,138,607 |
8 |
Predators
(20th Century Fox)
|
$7,016,502 |
-71.7% |
$40,300,543 |
9 |
Knight and Day
(20th Century Fox)
|
$3,608,021 |
-53.3% |
$69,117,400 |
10 |
The Karate Kid (2010)
(Sony Pictures)
|
$2,288,707 |
-57.3% |
$169,290,675 |
11 |
Cyrus
(Fox Searchlight)
|
$1,093,313 |
-14.6% |
$5,084,186 |
12 |
The Kids Are All Right
(Focus)
|
$1,064,359 |
+116.3% |
$1,813,866 |
|