Weekend Grosses
1) Spider-Man 3 $148 million
2) Disturbia $5.7 million
3) Fracture $3.4 million
4) The Invisible $3.1 million
5) Next $2.7 million
6) Lucky You $2.5 million
7) Meet the Robinsons $2.4 million
8) Blades of Glory $2.3 million
9) Hot Fuzz $2 million
10) Are We Done Yet? $1.7 million
It was a box office beat down unlike any other.
Early Saturday morning, the streets around Santee Alley were lined with Spider-Man 3 bootlegs. You couldn't take more than a couple of steps without having the disc literally thrust into your hands. That didn't stop the film from becoming an undisputed champ at the box office. According to Variety, the film took in $148 million, earning the highest weekend gross of all time. The film has taken the title belt away from past top weekend grosser Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which only raked in a lame $135.6 Million in 2006.
The sequel also managed to break a bunch of other records. It had the biggest opening day of all time with $59 million. And it had the biggest worldwide opening weekend with $375 million. This news has made Sony very happy. They've all but confirmed the likelihood of multiple future sequels.
Sony's Amy Pascal says, ""There'll be a fourth and a fifth and sixth and a seventh. As many stories as Peter Parker has to tell, we'll do sequels." She did not confirm Sam Raimi's hand in those sequels, nor the continuation of the franchise's current cast list. The studio accredits the film's earning power to its wide-ranging appeal. Not only was it an action fan's dream, but it was also a more family-friendly affair. And a great date movie to boot.
The rest of this weekend's thematic landscape was littered with bloody noses. The remaining films in the top ten punched and kicked their way to the few left over crumbs available. Audiences just didn't care about anything other than Spider-Man this weekend.
The week's only other new release, the long languishing Lucky You, barely managed to scrape together 2.5 million, placing it at number six on the list. Disturbia dropped to second place with $5.7 million dollars, bringing its overall total to $59 million. Not a bad chunk of change overall.
The rest were holdovers from the previous couple of weeks. Fracture, with its $3.4 million gross, barely squeaked past The Invisible's $3.1 million take. That put those films in the third and forth place positions. Nicolas Cage's Next followed with a rather tepid sum of $2.7 million, dropping it in a barely earned 5th place spot.
I couldn't find any information on the box office take for Snoop Dogg's Hood of Horror. It was supposed to open against Spidey, but Box Office Mojo doesn't even list the film in their database.
Spider-Man 3 has only next weekend to itself. After that, Shrek the Third will open on May 18th, and then the Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End will open the following weekend on May 25th. Look for things to get really interesting in the next month. It's going to be a pretty vicious summer at the box office.