Box Office Update: Inglourious Basterds Blast Their Way to the Top

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds has become his biggest opening film ever. It out grossed his previous top opener, Kill Bill Vol. 2, by more than $10 million. It is pretty amazing to think he hasn't had a bigger opener than this, even more amazing is that Pulp Fiction failed to crack $10 million period! In any case, I have been hearing very good things about Tarantino's journey into World War II, but (surprisingly) have not yet seen it, an issue I hope to rectify in the near future. In any case, I am curious to hear your thoughts?

Slipping to second place with a 50% dip, District 9 pulled in over $18 million. The dip was not terribly large and not all that unexpected. Hopefully it will not plummet after this, it really is a great movie and one I hope to catch again on the big screen. This movie is firing on all cylinders, the effects and action are great, as character and emotional development, quite the achievement for a debut feature.

Third place is held by GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. It suffered a moderate 45% drop, and the movie looks to be leveling off. This another one I have seen, and it is a brain dead flick that worked for. I know, I know, I should demand more, even from a summer blockbuster type movie adapted from a toy line. Somehow, this was entertaining and fun in spite of its utter lack of intelligence. It does what Transformers failed to do, embrace the cheese of the source and not take itself too seriously.

The Time Traveler's Wife and Julie & Julia each slide down a notch and continue to do solid business. I liked parts of the former and most of the latter, and both deliver experiences that should continue to do decent business on theaters before continuing to do so on DVD and Blu-ray.

A second new film arrives on the top ten list, landing in sixth place. Robert Rodriguez's Shorts did a moderate opening weekend, managing to pull down nearly $6.5 million. That sounds about right for the child-targeted fantasy, although it is also happens to be the lowest opening ever for a Rodriguez film, aside from El Mariachi, but that was a very small open.

The only notable film of the bottom half is that The Goods managed to hang onto the top ten. The film is surprisingly boring and the audience reaction seems to agree as word of mouth has not been good. It will fade away until the home video release, where it will likely gain renewed life.

Next week will see competition from a pair of horror films: The Final Destination continues the quest of Death to kill, and Halloween II will feature the return of Michael Myers. Good weekend to like horror!
Two movies dropped off the top ten this week: Ponyo (12) and Funny People (17).

This Week	Last Week	Title	Wknd Gross	Overall	Week in release
1	N	Inglourious Basterds	$38,054,676	$38,054,676	1
2	1	District 9	$18,213,546	$72,804,317	2
3	2	G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra	$12,204,927	$120,235,874	3
4	3	The Time Traveler's Wife	$9,742,427	$37,165,676	2
5	4	Julie & Julia	$8,800,674	$59,088,965	3
6	N	Shorts	$6,410,339	$6,410,339	1
7	5	G-Force	$4,114,661	$107,224,616	5
8	7	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	$3,478,149	$290,238,524	6
9	8	The Ugly Truth	$2,774,174	$82,811,624	5
10	N	The Goods: Live Hard. Sell Hard.	$2,710,194	$11,247,625	2

Box Office Predictions Recap
This week is a tale of two guesses. With regards to this weeks predictions, when I was on, I was on, but when I was off, I was way off. The top four spots fell in line with what I was expecting, but that is when everything begins to fall apart, I did not get the remaining six in the right positions, and in a couple of cases, my guesses did not even crack the top ten. The same can be said for my dollar predictions, I was either really close, or really, really off. In one case, I was caught off guard (Inglourious Basterds) and in another I really should have known better (X Games The Movie: 3D).

Here is how the field matched up:

Actual	Prediction	Title	Wknd Gross	Prediction
1	1	Inglouriuous Basterds	$38,054,676	$26 million
2	2	District 9	$18,213,546	$21 million
3	3	G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra	$12,204,927	$12 million
4	4	The Time Traveler's Wife	$9,742,427	$9 million
6	5	Shorts	$6,410,339	$7.5 million
5	6	Julie & Julia	$8,800,674	$6.5 million
11	7	Post Grad	$2,651,996	$6 million
7	8	G-Force	$4,114,661	$3.5 million
10	9	The Goods: Live Hard. Sell Hard	$2,710,194	$2.5 million
19	10	X Games the Movie: 3D	$837,216	$2 million