Box Office - $60 Million for 'Despicable Me'

When you stop to consider that Despicable Me cost les than $70 million to make and it brought back $60 million in its first three days, you really have to applaud Universal for its efforts here. Although the marketing budget had to be pretty stout, anytime you can win a summer weekend with that kind of budget, you're off to a good start. So the $69 million movie is close to making that money back and even if it spent $100 million on the advertising, it should best that amount within a month, giving Universal a real summer box office player, something the studio hasn't had since Wanted and Mamma Mia! two years ago. The $60 million start, more robust than was anticipated, was easily enough to win the weekend and should set up at least a $150 million run in the US. As we mentioned yesterday, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse didn't tumble as much as was expected. New Moon lost almost 70% in its second weekend last fall, but Eclipse managed to only drop 48%. There are two possible explanations. The first is that this is a better film than New Moon and the second is that, since Eclipse opened on a Wednesday and wasn't as big Friday - Sunday during its opening weekend as it should have been, there was less of an artificial number to live up to. I don't think this film catches Toy Story 3 despite its big start, because it would need to make probably $140 - $150 million more to do that, but it should eclipse - zing! - $300 million and might overtake Iron Man 2 in the annual totals. The other new release this weekend is Predators, and it slowed down as the weekend went on, but still managed to grab $25 million. Because it only cost $40 million or so, it'll make money, but how much? Will people check it out with the next two weeks being dominated by sci-fi and action movies? This may have been better placed outside of summer, where it could have had more of a competitive advantage. Toy Story 3, meanwhile, is officially the year's top movie and the top Pixar film, with a domestic total now over $340 million. Can it get to $400 million? Yeah, it could. It will be over $360 million by this time next week, possibly even $370 million, but even if it's on the low end of that estimate, another $40 million isn't out of the question. Certainly, it gets to $385 million. And The Last Airbender rounds out the top five, dropping off nearly 60% from its debut, but that was expected to happen. It's still a $100 million movie in the US, and could get to within shouting distance of its production budget, but it will need a big push internationally to truly mke money. The Top Five:
1 - Despicable Me ($60 million)
2 - Eclipse ($33 million)
3 - Predators ($25 million)
4 - Toy Story 3 ($22 million)
5 - The Last Airbender ($17 million)