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Pixar’s “Brave” did $24.5M on Friday and expected to gross around $70M this weekend, better than the $60M box office analysts were projecting. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, it’s the third highest opening day box office for Pixar behind “Toy Story 3” ($41M) and “Cars 2” ($25.7M).

Despite it's all-star cast, "Rock of Ages" ekes out $15.1 million opening; "That's My Boy" grosses $13 million, marking Adam Sandler's worst opening for a comedy in eight years... Instead, it was holdovers "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" and "Prometheus" that continued to top the chart, staying at No. 1 and No. 2 respectively with $35.5 million and $20.2 million.

Circus animals and space beasts have lifted Hollywood to a huge weekend. The cuddly critters of "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" led the weekend with a $60.4 million debut domestically, followed by a big opening for Ridley Scott's alien saga "Prometheus" at No.

In anticipation of this week’s opening of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” which is set in the Alien universe and is a sort of a prequel, I went to BoxOfficeMojo.com to compile box office figures for the entire Alien franchise, excluding the two AVPs (“Alien vs. Predator”).

“The Dark Knight Rises” may be on the horizon, but Disney/Marvel’s “The Avengers” can now look at “The Dark Knight” in the rear-view mirror. “The Avengers” grossed $20.3-million this weekend to lift its total domestic take to $552.7-million — rocketing it past Warner Bros./DC’s ”The Dark Knight” ($533.3-million) for third all-time in the record books. The Marvel-superheroes-assembled blockbuster is now the most successful superhero film ever.

The Universal event pic is the first of the recent fairy tale retellings to win at the box office; Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" opens overseas to stellar $35 million from only 15 markets, nearly matching the $39.3 million grossed by "Snow White" from 45 territories.

In my “Battleship” article, I wrote that a Universal exec or two will probably have to resign if “Snow White and The Hunstman” didn’t perform up to expectations because of how poorly the ultra expensive “Battleship” have done at the box office recently.

While big-budget blockbusters were dueling it out at the multiplex this weekend, an independent film quietly made history at the box office. "Moonrise Kingdom,"Wes Anderson's quirky 1960s-set dramedy about two kids who run off into the wilderness, grossed $669,486 over the four-day Memorial Day holiday. But by Sunday, the film had already racked up a per-location average of $130,752 while playing in four theaters — the highest average ever for a non-animated film, said the film's distributor Focus Features. Previously, that record was held by 2006's "Dreamgirls," which debuted with an average of $126,317 at three cinemas.

But to come out ahead, Sony's 3D tentpole will need plenty of kids and families to turn out over the long Memorial Day weekend; horror pic "Chernobyl Diaries" opens in the No. 4 spot with $3.5 milllion, Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom" soars at the specialty box office.read more

Once again, it was all about The Avengers at the box office, as three new releases failed to even approach the Marvel superhero blockbuster’s third-weekend gross of $55.1 million, according to studio estimates. The movie dropped 47 percent — an admirable hold for a picture that’s putting up such huge numbers. By the end of Sunday, The Avengers will have made an estimated $457.1 million domestically, passing $450 million in a record 17 days. (The previous record holder, The Dark Knight, reached that milestone in 27 days.) Meanwhile, The Avengers also passed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest to become Disney’s biggest movie ever both domestically and worldwide. It now sits in fourth place on the all-time worldwide chart, behind only Avatar, Titanic, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2.