The July 4th weekend has come to a close, but the celebrations will continue for both Summit Entertainment and Paramount. As expected, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse nabbed the top spot with $82.5 million. Stealing the film’s thunder quite a bit is that it earned a record-breaking $68.5 million on Wednesday alone, which means it took quite a hit from day one to day two, a 64.7% drop to be exact. Over the four-day weekend, the film made that $82.5 million, tack on the estimated $13.5 million it made today and that brings the grand total to $175.3 million.
But that was expected. The surprise winner of the weekend is M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender. Despite being ravaged by critics and moviegoers, the 3D epic managed to pull in an impressive $56.8 million from Thursday to Sunday. It’s estimated $12.6 million Monday haul brings the grand total to $70.5 million.
Back to the sure things with Toy Story 3 which held strong with a $42.2 million four-day total. The weekend intake in addition to today’s $12 million, gets TS3 over the $300 million mark, making it the third film of the year to do so, right behind Alice in Wonderland and Iron Man 3.
Grown Ups finds itself in the fourth position with $26.5 million while Knight and Day comes in fifth with $14 million. The Karate Kid earned another $11.5 million landing it in the sixth spot with The A-Team and its $4.3 million addition following behind in spot #7. Eighth went to Get Him to the Greek with $1.7 million while ninth was claimed by Shrek Forever After with its $1.3 million. Lastly we’ve got the limited release Cyrus with $774,000 in its third week scoring an impressive $13,234 per showing.
Threatening to displace our top performers next weekend are Despicable Me and Predators. Despicable Me will likely have a large weekend haul and take some of the attention off Toy Story 3, but at the pace TS3 is going, the head-to-head match could have a more devastating effect on Despicable Me. As for Predators, it’s going up against a handful of films all geared toward younger audiences, so it should hold up quite nicely.
By Perri Nemiroff (via Box Office Mojo)
