Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud’s Despicable Me, featuring the voices of Steve Carell, Jason Segel, Julie Andrews, Miranda Cosgrove, and others, was the no. 1 movie at the North American box office on Thursday, July 15. That may well have been its last time at the top, as Christopher Nolan’s Inception opened today to solid business.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Berenger, Ken Watanabe, and Michael Caine, Inception grossed an estimated $18m-$20m on Friday according to Deadline.com. That amount includes about $3m from Thursday midnight screenings.
Weekend expectations for Nolan’s generally well-received sci-fi/thriller have been hovering around $60m-$65m.
On Thursday, Despicable Me topped the chart with $6.39m according to Box Office Mojo.
It was followed by Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Taylor Lautner’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, back at no. 2 with $3.43m on Thursday and $251.3m total.
Down one spot at no. 3, the poorly received The Sorcerer’s Apprentice earned $3.21m — down a significant 17% from the day before. The Disney release fell below the $1,000-per-day average ($950 at 3,385 sites) on its second day out.
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Jon Turteltaub, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice stars Nicolas Cage, Jay Baruchel, Alfred Molina, and Teresa Palmer.
With $2.51m, the no. 4 movie was Lee Unkrich’s Toy Story 3, which has crossed the $350m milestone at the domestic box office. The animated 3D feature’s total currently stands at $350.9m.
At no. 5, Adam Sandler, David Spade, Chris Rock, Kevin James, and Rob Schneider’s Grown Ups collected $1.86m.
At no. 6, Nimród Antal’s Predators, starring Adrien Brody, Topher Grace, Alice Braga, and Laurence Fishburne, pulled in $1.67m.
Next in line was M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, starring Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Jackson Rathbone, Nicola Peltz, and Shaun Toub, with $1.57m.
The Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz spy caper Knight and Day earned $801k at no. 8, followed by the Jackie Chan-Jaden Smith vehicle The Karate Kid with $562k.
Rounding out the top eleven were Bradley Cooper’s The A-Team with $161k and Jonah Hill’s Cyrus with $120k.
Among the top eleven movies, Despicable Me had the highest per-theater average, $1,840 (below the $2,000 per-theater mark on its seventh day out). The A-Team had the lowest, $203.
Ten of the top eleven movies at the North American box office were down on Thursday. The one exception was The A-Team, which managed to gross nearly $1,000 more than on Wednesday (a microscopic +0.6%). Cyrus had the worst drop-off rate, -18.5%, followed by The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’s -17%.
Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Hutcherson, and Mia Wasikowska, grossed $61k at 7 locations.
Among the films listed on Box Office Mojo’s Thursday chart, The Kids Are All Right once again had by far the highest per-theater average: $8,778.
Photo: Universal Pictures