Weekend Box Office – July 11, 2010

The box office numbers are now in for the week of July 11th, 2010. Once again, it came out almost exactly how analysts predicted and there were only a few surprises. Despicable Me had a very impressive opening and took the number one spot this week. Take a look at the full report below.

1. Despicable Me – $60.1 million; $60.1 mil (debut)
2. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse – $33.4 million; $237 mil
3. Predators – $25.3 million; $25.3 mil (debut)
4. Toy Story 3 – $22 million; $340 mil
5. The Last Airbender – $17.2 million; $100 mil
6. Grown Ups – $16.4 million; $111 mil
7. Knight & Day – $7.9 million; $61.9 mil
8. The Karate Kid – $5.7 million; $165 mil
9. The A-Team – $1.8 million; $74 mil
10. Cyrus – $1.4 million; $3.5 mil

Surprisingly Despicable Me hit a chord with audiences and overtook Twilight. I didn’t see this coming, especially since the early reviews for Despicable Me weren’t too favourable. Not only did Despicable Me open at #1 but it had a strong opening with $60 million. I’m sure the folks at Universal are thrilled with this as they are trying to break into the animation market that is currently dominated by Pixar and Dreamworks.

Eclipse had a strong weekend and pulled in $33 million to brings its total to $237 million. I’m sure the folks at Summit are just loving it right now. The film is making Summit a ton of money and it’s also in line with New Moon in terms of how fast it is making money and how much money it’s making. Eclipse is impressing analysts even more though since it had to compete in July whereas New Moon was released in November. July is a much more competitive time for the box office.

Predators did a lot better than I expected, it took in $25.3 million and claimed the number 3 spot. Despite the positive reviews I really didn’t think it would pull in that much money. For an R rated movie this is a pretty respectable opening and nothing to look down upon.

Toy Story 3 is still going strong in the number 4 spot as it pulls its total to a whopping $340 million. The 3D is helping it out a lot and clearly audiences don’t have a problem with the inflated ticket prices. You can expect Toy Story 3 to keep its spot in the top 10 for a few more weeks.

The Last Airbender took a huge hit. Although it ended up in fifth place it didn’t make anywhere near what it made last weekend. It has hit the $100 million mark but due to the huge budget of the film, $100 million isn’t all that impressive.

The rest of the list is what we expected. Grown Ups and Knight and Day continue to duke it out and clearly moviegoers are sick of Tom Cruise. Once again The Karate Kid triumphs over The A-Team in what will probably be the last time we see either of these on the top 10. Lastly we have Cyrus holding onto it’s #10 spot. As expected, Shrek and Get Him To The Greek disappeared from the list.

Next week we get the new Christopher Nolan film, Inception. It will almost certainly claim the number one spot and is probably the most highly anticipated film of the summer.