Leonardo Dicaprio, Friday Box Office | featured news

Leonardo DiCaprio's "Inception" is anything but a sleeper as the thriller opened big with $60.4 million and a No. 1 finish at the weekend boxoffice.

Christopher Nolan is having a fantastic Saturday. Jerry Bruckheimer is not. For the Dark Knight director scored over $21 million on Friday for his original, mind-bending film Inception. (That includes the $3 million brought in from the opening midnight shows.) The Leonardo DiCaprio-starrer, from Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures, could now earn $60 million for its three-day opening frame. That’s quite a contrast to The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Disney’s failed attempt to recreate the magic of The National Treasure franchise. The film from Treasure producer Bruckheimer, director Jon Turteltaub and star Nicolas Cage grossed an estimated $5 million on Friday for a weekend take that may just hit $15 million. The film opened on Wednesday but even those two days of grosses won’t help the film get much past $20 million for the five-day period.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese continue to lure movie-goers to "Shutter Island," while James Cameron's "Avatar" has surpassed $700 million domestically....

Holdover Shutter Island, the Marty Scorsese/Leo DiCaprio psychological thriller from Paramount, will easily stay No. 1 again with just a 51% drop from a week ago. It made $6.7M Friday for what should be a $21M weekend and estimated cume of $75+M. Warner Bros' Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan buddy comedy Cop Out (formerly entitled A Couple Of Dicks) opened Friday with $6.2M for an expected $18.5M weekend which shows audiences are starved for laughs.

“Shutter Island,” yanked from the fall release schedule by a cost-cutting Paramount Pictures, was a strong No. 1 at the North American box office.

Paramount's delay of Shutter Island's release, once widely questioned, now looks shrewdly strategic. Sources tell me this 4th film collaboration between Marty Scorsese and Leo DiCaprio is shaping up tonight as the highest-grossing debut ever, bigger than 2002's Gangs Of New York, 2004's The Aviator, and 2006's The Departed (which posted their previous biggest opening ever of $26.8M).