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:

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:

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:

Toy Story 3 held on to the top spot for a second week with no problem from either of the two big releases.  Adam Sandler's latest, Grown Ups, fared much better with audiences than Tom Cruise's Knight and Day, which reunited him with his Vanilla Sky costar, Cameron Diaz.  It would appear that Mr. Cruise is still suffering from the "Michael Jackson effect," and that the public has turned its back on him due to his overly-publicized behavior from a full five years ago now.  In Michael Jackson's case, the international audience never deserted him no matter what was being written about him in the tabloids, so we'll see how Knight and Day fares in foreign markets to see if Tom Cruise is as fortunate.  Right now on the domestic front, however, it's definitely not good news for 20th Century Fox, the film's distributor, that Cruise opened at number 3 for the week behind an Adam Sandler comedy.

Among holdovers, all movies were down between 44% and 70%, with Shrek Forever After and the critically-derided and audience-ignored Jonah Hex at the low and high ends, respectively.  Thus far this summer, only Iron Man 2 and Toy Story 3 have had box office sales that met industry expectations.  Box office was down again this week as compared to the same weekend last year, but all that could change this weekend if the latest Twilight flick, Eclipse, does as well as it should. 

More of a question mark, however, is the latest from director M. Night Shyamalan, The Last Airbender.  Trailers have been exciting and have made this film look as visually draw dropping as the animated series (Avatar: The Last Airbender) that it is derived from, but how much recognition does this Nickelodeon cartoon series have with the general public, and is it smart to release it opposite Twilight and a still-strong Toy Story 3?

Here are the domestic box office actuals for the weekend of June 25-27, 2010: