Ben Affleck's second shot as director, The Town, easily took the number one slot and grossed more in its first three days than Affleck's directorial debut, 2007's Gone Baby Gone, did in its entire run.  Easy A opened in second place with almost $18 million, which was solid for the teen comedy genre.  Costing only $8 million to make, Easy A has already broken even on its production budget.  The other two openers, the horror flick, Devil, and the animated Alpha and Omega performed on the low end of their respective genres.

Among holdovers, Drew Barrymore's Going the Distance dropped like a brick from number 5 to number 13 after only 3 weeks.  As of now, it stands at $16.7 million total domestic gross, about half of its modest production budget.  Last week's champ, Resident Evil: Afterlife, shed 62.5% of its audience and fell to number 4 on the chart.  However, Resident Evil is a solid worldwide franchise, and this fourth film in the series has already made over $100 million additionally in overseas markets owing largely to the higher ticket prices that its 3D format commands.  Elsewhere, Sylvester Stallone has achieved a symbolic victory: his first $100 million domestic grossing movie in 25 years as The Expendables crossed the mark after 36 days in release.

Next week's new entries seem somewhat more promising: the animated fable, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, the greed-is-good sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and the comedy, You Again, starring Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Sigourney Weaver.

Here are the domestic box office actuals for the weekend of September 17-19, 2010: