Steve Carell And His Minions Top The Box Office

July 11, 2010 | by The Infamous Billy The Kidd |

As expected and predicted last week, DESPICABLE ME earned the top spot at the box office this week, opening with $60.1 million, easily running away with the #1 ranking as no other film was even within reach of its money. Aided as always by the 3-D screens, DESPICABLE ME rode Steve Carell and his minions to nearly cover the film’s budget, and, with no real competition for the children’s audience on the horizon (I have a hard time seeing mass amounts of people coming out for RAMONA AND BEEZUS) and a large share of the 3-D screens in its possession until the end of July, this could be a solid run for DESPICABLE ME. In fact, don’t be surprised once the film creeps over the $200 million, as the family audience has proven to be the most consistent at coming out for films they want to see so far this summer.

Surprisingly, the Twi-hards continue to come out in solid numbers, and, even while suffering a 48% drop from its opening, THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE’s $33.4 million was still good enough to place 2nd. That puts the 3rd installment right at the $237 million mark, giving Team Jacob and Team Edward a solid chance to surpass $300 million. This should prove that, regardless of its release date (November or June), TWILIGHT is a monster, and Summit Entertainment had better figure out how to stretch BREAKING DAWN into more than 2 movies, because this is the best money-maker the studio has ever seen, and the likelihood of ever duplicating this again is extremely slim.

PREDATORS limped out from the starting gate, opening with a weak $25.3 million, further showing that audiences just aren’t coming out for big action movies this summer. The sequel to the Schwarzenegger classic should easily cover its $40 million budget within another week or so, but this puts it right on par with THE A-TEAM’s opening earlier this summer, something I predicted here last week. Both films were retreads of material better known in the 80s that younger audiences may not be all that familiar with, and both films were put out by 20th Century Fox, which might want to rethink its strategy of hiding these flicks from the fans before their release dates. As entertaining (to an extent) as both movies were, clearly the awareness wasn’t there enough for either, and that’s reflected in the box office numbers. If Fox chooses to stay the course, that can’t be good news for MACHETE.

TOY STORY 3 continued to do strong business, pulling in $22 million, and pushing it over $340 million, which makes it not only the highest-grossing Pixar movie of all-time (moving past FINDING NEMO), but also the highest-grossing movie of the year so far. $400 million is well within the realm of possibility, and something The Kidd would love to see, because, if any film deserves it so far this year, it’s the classic toys from Pixar. Once again, another job well done by that crew, which is really nothing new.

The only real box office surprise of the week is that people are still paying money to see THE LAST AIRBENDER, as the $17.1 million it earned has now put it over the $100 million benchmark. Seriously…? THE LAST AIRBENDER is a $100 million movie…? And you laugh when I say people will see any kind of shit these days.

Last week, my predictions were close once again, as I was only off by $8 million on DESPICABLE ME’s opening take, and dead-on with PREDATORS, even though I did hope it might do a little better, for the sake of movies this summer. Let’s see how well I can do next week.

2 major releases hit theatres this week – THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE and INCEPTION. Disney’s live-action version of THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, starring Nicolas Cage and Jay Baruchel, moved up its date by a couple of days to launch on Wednesday, and, while I don’t sense a demand for people to see this one immediately during the middle of the week, I suspect the family audiences will come out for this one pretty strongly. I think there is room for this and DESPICABLE ME to each do very well, and would put APPRENTICE somewhere between the opening numbers of the 2 NATIONAL TREASURE movies. I’m looking at about a $58 million haul for Disney on this one.

INCEPTION, on the other hand, should be an absolute giant this week and beyond. This is the movie everyone has been talking about this summer, and the teasing nature of all of its promotional materials, which give you enough to be interested but not enough to feel like you’ve seen the best yet to come, has audiences labeling it as their must-see movie of the summer. No small hype indeed. The PG-13 rating will really help it, as far as getting more people in the door, attracting both older and younger audiences, and the Christopher Nolan name really has a lot of value based on the strength of THE DARK KNIGHT. I’m not expecting Batman numbers here, but, with IMAX screens pumping up the numbers, $108 million to open for INCEPTION doesn’t seem unreasonable to me.

Here’s the full top 10 from this weekend’s box office: