In a surprise to no one, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse grabbed the top spot at the box office like it was the last piece of cake this weekend, earning $69 million.  That was enough for the third highest Independence Day weekend opening (behind Spider-Man 2 and Transformers), and the seventh highest five-day opening, with $161 million.  Long story short, it’s doing about as well as everyone expected with few surprises either way.

The Last Airbender managed to earn $40.7 million, despite some of the worst reviews I’ve ever seen, and actually outgrossed Prince of Persia‘s four-day star by 50 percent.  I can only hope this increases the possibility that Shyamalan will eventually have to face an angry mob.

Elsewhere, there weren’t too many surprises.  Knight and Day reached $45 million ($70 million worldwide), which doesn’t sound too bad, but it also has a listed production budget (not including marketing) of $117 million.  It’d be nice if the lesson they took from this flop was that maybe making a movie that looks like 10 movies we’ve already seen isn’t the “safe bet” they always thought.  But let’s be serious, the lesson they take will probably be “CAMERON DIAZ’S HEAD SHOULD HAVE BEEN BIGGER ON THE POSTER.  PEOPLE MUST NOT HAVE KNOWN BIG STARS WERE IN THIS MOVIE.”

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You have to figure a movie that gets mentioned during a congressional hearing would make a c*ntload of dough, and you’d be right.  Being an abstinence parable doesn’t mean you have to abstain from cash money, son. According to early estimates, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse has bumped Dark Knight down a notch on the list of biggest opening days.  In a related story, Dark Knight is now covered in cat fur.

Summit Entertainment’s The Twilight Saga: Eclipse earned an estimated $68.5 million its first day which is a new record for a Wednesday opening, surpassing previous record holder Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($62 million). The third installment debuted in a record 4,416 theaters.
While the opening day is not as big as The Twilight Saga: New Moon‘s record of $72.7 million, if the estimate holds it would still be the second-best single day and opening day ever and would knock The Dark Knight ($67.2 million) to third. [ComingSoon]

New Moon eventually topped out at $709.9 million worldwide, while Dark Knight went on to gross more than a billion dollars, in much the same way that a Twihard can lift a bus if there’s a sandwich under it, but tire after walking up a few stairs.   I kid, I kid.  In any case, Stephenie Meyer was said to be flattered by the huge opening, writing, “It’s a very big opening day.  Our opening day was massive.  It was so big, it was scary.”

Descriptive!

RELATED ASYLUM POLL: Under what circumstances would you watch Twilight?

It seems Fox’s brilliant viral campaign featuring Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise doing candid things was a failure, as Knight and Day landed a distant third at the box office.  I was about to take Schadenfreude Sloth out for a walk, but Kevin James farted on his head and hit him in the groin with a football.  Grown Ups earned $41 million, doubling Knight and Day‘s $20.5 million take and landing it in second behind Toy Story 3 ($59 million), thereby proving that audiences will literally pay for Adam Sandler to take a sh*t on their face.  The only thing he’s not allowed to do is make fun of himself or anything thoughtful (sorry, Funny People). Sorry, Adam Sandler, you must play the lovable every man from now until the end of time.  You are the Will Smith of comedy.  Speaking of which…

Karate Kid landed in fourth.  Not a bad showing, but probably not the smash hit people predicted after the big opening weekend.  So don’t start wearing sneakers with pictures of yourself on them just yet, Jaden Smith.  What’s that?  Aw, crap.

The two biggest losers of the weekend were Jonah Hex, which fell 70% from last weekend, earning $1.6 million this weekend and still short of the $10 million mark, cumulatively; and Killers, which earned $2 million and fell 60% from last weekend.  I still maintain that Jonah Hex was a glorious, glorious trainwreck.  Meanwhile, if life was fair, the people who financed Killers would be less popular than the CEO of BP right now.  Sure, one indirectly contributed to an ecological catastrophe, but at least that was an accident.  The Killers people not only put Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl into a movie together… they did it on purpose.

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Only a few weeks ago, we were talking about a box-office slump and Hollywood’s worst Memorial Day Weekend in 17 years.  Turns out all it takes is a 3D Pixar movie to reverse that trend, as Toy Story 3 carried the cumulative box office to its highest third weekend in June ever, up 29% over the same weekend last year. (Full top 10 after the jump).

Toy Story 3 grossed an estimated $109, the highest-grossing weekend of a Pixar picture yet (aided by premium 3D pricing, of course), followed by Karate Kid, A-Team, and Get Him to the Greek, all of which fell less than 50% from the previous weekend.  Pretty much every film did well this weekend.  Oh, except for Jonah Hex, which managed to earn less in its opening weekend than Killers did in its third.  Yep, that’s the Ashton Kutcher-Katherine Heigl joint that didn’t screen for critics.  Turns out, movie fans may be stupid, but not so stupid that you can stick a hastily-cobbled together, 72-minute comic-book hack job up against Pixar and expect it to make money.  Hey, where are all those semi-annual “Critics Don’t Matter” articles now?  People heard it sucked and they stayed away.  THAT’S RIGHT, PRETTY BOY, CRITICS ARE IMPORTANT TOO! WOOHOO!

(*high fives cat, puts Ace bandage on wrist, puffs inhaler*)

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If not putting your whole hand in your pocket is cool, Bieber and Jaden are Davis and Coltrane.

Precious, booger-lipped wiener kids everywhere breathed a sigh of relief into their gilded inhalers this week as Jaden Smith proved that children of celebrities can succeed, so long as their parents buy them Jackie Chan.  Or, to put it in plain English, The Karate Kid earned $56 six million godd*mned dollars this week.  If you vote with your pocketbook, the American moviegoer overwhelmingly checked the box next to “I hate Jesus, America, puppies, and ice cream.”

While Karate Kid was making twice what the studio had predicted, The A-Team underperformed almost as much.  It earned $26 million for the weekend, which, in and of itself isn’t horrible, but as Deadline says:

That’s embarrassing for what was supposed to be the start of another franchise and a nailbiter between the two opening movies. It turned out not even close. ”A pretty spectacular win,” one Sony exec exulted. “Not even Jerry Weintraub predicted that.”

Man, who would’ve thought a crappy-TV-show-based film that went through eleven screenwriters wouldn’t be a huge hit, huh?  I tell you, it’s a strange time to be alive.  Hey, assh*les, even McDonald’s had to make sure people liked their burgers before they started thinking franchise.  But let’s not let the A-Team detract from the real news: the era of celeb karaoke has officially upon us.  Thanks, Will and Jaden Smith, you’ve ruined everything for everyone.  I can’t wait until Tom Hanks’ kid gets to be a movie star now.  …Wait, what?  Aw crap.

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