Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Inception
Hayden Christensen's TAKERS in Second; Robert Rodriguez's MACHETE in Third: Box Office
At no. 4, Daniel Stamm's mockumentary The Last Exorcism, starring Ashley Bell, brought in $7.64m — down a worrisome 62.5% from a week ago — according to studio estimates found at Box Office Mojo.
But with the exception of Exorcism, the other top-twelve holdovers performed remarkably well — little competition from newcomers The American, Going the Distance, and Machete, surely helped — dropping less than 45% and in some cases less than 25%.
Inception, for one, dropped a mere 7.1%. If the Christopher Nolan-Leonardo DiCaprio thriller/sci-fier stays the course, it'll quite possibly not only reach $300m domestically but will also surpass the Robert Pattinson-Kristen Stewart-Taylor Lautner romantic fantasy The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, currently with $298.67m. (Eclipse grossed an estimated $420k this weekend.)
Elsewhere on the domestic box-office chart, most movies also suffered only modest drops (at no. 13, Despicable Me was down a mere -1.2%), and a few — kiddie flicks such as The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Toy Story 3, and Shrek Forever After — actually posted attendance increases.
Back to The Last Exorcism: The film's investors shouldn't be too worried, as the $1.8m production has already earned $32.42m domestically, making it one of the most profitable — if not the most profitable — domestic release of 2010, in terms of revenue/cost ratio.
Photo: Inception (Stephen Vaughan / Warner Bros.).