Box Office | featured news

Wow, looks like stupidity is even better in 3-D. At least that’s what Johnny Knoxville and his crew of American idiots proved yesterday, pulling in an astounding $20 million on Friday for a weekend that’s bound to hit $40 million even if moviegoers drop off after Jackass 3D‘s opening night. The Bruce Willis-Helen Mirren-starrer Red also had a solid beginning, earning approximately $7 million on Friday for a three-day that could reach $20 million.

Movie fans have bookmarked the Facebook drama "The Social Network" as their weekend favorite. David Fincher's saga about personality clashes and legal feuds among the website's founders took in $15.5 million to remain the No. 1 film for a second straight weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. Released by Sony, "The Social Network" raised its 10-day total to $46.1 million.

Earning $5.3 million, "Life As We Know It" took the early box office lead ahead of the weekend's two other new releases: "Secretariat" and "My Soul to Take."

1. The Social Network (Sony) NEW [2,771 Theaters]
Friday $8M, Estimated Weekend $24M

The stories behind Microsoft and Apple only rated TV movies. But The Social Network received the full big screen PG-13 treatment as the first major pedigreed project about the Internet that wasn't just another crime thriller.

Greed proved to be simply good enough during the weekend. Fox's Michael Douglas starrer "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps" topped the domestic box office with a good-but-not great $19 million in estimated opening coin. Once scheduled for spring release until postponed to adult-friendly fall, Oliver Stone's sequel to his original 1987 financial thriller may have been a bit hampered by the unavailability of its ailing topliner for promo stumping.

Film opens with $23.8 million to take the No. 1 spot. The intense Warner Bros. drama about bank robbers in an insular section of Boston earned rave reviews.

Actor/director Ben Affleck's Warner Bros crime thriller is overperforming at the North American box office tonight. Based on Friday's $8.5M grosses, it will easily finish No. 1 this opening weekend when it was only predicted to come in 2nd. The "R"-rated movie's estimated $25+M looks like it will nearly equal the $28.6M of the same studio's October 6, 2006, Boston crime thriller The Departed directed by Martin Scorsese.

"Resident Evil: Afterlife" showed there's still plenty of life in the franchise when it posted an estimated $10.9 million to open atop the Friday box office.

1. Machete (Fox) NEW [2,670 Theaters]
Friday $3.9M, Estimated 4-Day Holiday $14M)

2. The American (Focus Features) NEW [2,823 Theaters] Opened Wed
Friday $3.8M, Estimated 4-Day Holiday $16M, Estimated Cume $15M

3. Takers (Screen Gems/Sony) Week 2 [2,206 Theaters]
Friday $3.1M (-60%), Estimated 4-Day Holiday $14M, Estimated Cume $40M

Moviegoers wanted to get scared just as much as they wanted to enjoy a good crime caper this weekend, but very few were interested in a return trip to Pandora. Based on studio estimates released Sunday morning, indie horror film "The Last Exorcism" and heist film "Takers" were in a virtual dead heat, with both selling about $21 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada for the weekend.