Top Shelf at the Box Office

Ok, as has been proven pretty consistently week in and week out, I don't know shit about predicting box office. That's why I'm not an analyst, but given their less than stellar track record for these things I'm in pretty good company. But anyway, I went out of my way to say that I thought Star Trek would under perform at the box office, and it looks like my prediction was way off in the Outer Rim someplace. I was right about Next Day Air, though!

1. Star Trek- $72.5M/$76.5M

Star Trek warped past all other competitors this week, bringing him 72.5M this weekend plus $4M at the Thursday previews. The opening is the highest grossing of the Star Trek franchise, besting my favorite ST flick, First Contact which only opened at $30M. Considering that the receipts actually grew from Friday to Sunday, that implies that ST could have significant staying power. In fact, I'll go on to state that I think it will manage to hold off Tom Hanks and Ron Howard's strangely promoted Angels and Demons this week in a big budget showdown. Star Trek has the benefit of a limited IMAX run of two weeks, which should force people to continue to see it for atleast that period of time.

2. X-men Origins: Wolverine-$27M/$130M

Wolverine is the best he is at what he does, and what he did this week was drop about 70%. That's due in no small part to Star Trek's blazing start, which was still less than Wolvie's opening by a healthy margin, but also due to poor word of mouth. With the news that nearly 4 million people also downloaded the film illegally nearly a month before it's release, it must also factor in that maybe the majority of "new" viewers have already seen the movie and that it will falter from here on out. This second week tally is the lowest for all of the X-men films, even that stinker of a third film.

3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past- $10.4M/$30.2M

The Shirtless Wonder proved that he's got more staying power than one would think, only losing about 30% of last week's gross. The film didn't do itself any favors with the timing of it's release, nor the odd marketing campaign that made it seem like dead folks were hounding the main character, which ain't the case.

4. Obsessed- $6.6M/$56.2M

Yesterday my grandma told me that she and my grandpa desperately want to go see "that Obsession movie", which I'm assuming they meant Obsessed. Only goes to prove my point that trashy, racially tinged B-movies featuring hot broads knows no generational bounds.

5. 17 Again- $4.41M/$54.2M

6. Next Day Air- $4M

I'm not sure what studios were expecting from a dark buddy comedy about two murderous, drug dealing criminals but I'm pretty sure it was more than they actually got. Then again there are practically no bankable faces here, and maybe this is exactly what they were expecting. It was a decent film, at any rate.

7. The Soloist- $3.6M/$23.5M

This just keep chuggin' along, hoping it hangs around late enough that it might be remembered come Razzie season. I mean Oscar season! Slip of the finger!

8. Monsters vs. Aliens- $3.38M/$187M

9. Earth- $2.49M/$26.1M

10. Hannah Montana: The Movie- $2.41M/$74.1M