Weekend Box Office: August 27-29

Courtesy of Box Office Mojo: 

1.  Takers - $20,512,304

2.  The Last Exorcism - $20,366,613

3.  The Expendables - $9.5 million

4.  Eat Pray Love - $6.8 million

5.  The Other Guys - $6.2 million

6.  Vampires Suck - $5.2 million

7.  Inception - $4.8 million

8.  Nanny McPhee Returns - $4.7 million

9.  The Switch - $4.5 million

10.  Piranha 3D - $4.3 million

A tight (but not exactly nail-biting) race for first place kept us waiting a little longer for the box office results to finalize, but in the end Takers just barely beat out The Last Exorcism for the top spot by less than a half million in one of the last weekends of the summer.

Both movies performed well by going over $20 million in their debut.  Any worries that the re-release of Avatar (special edition!) would spoil it for everyone else this weekend were put to rest quickly when it failed to even crack the top 10, although it did earn an additional $4 million to go with the gazillions James Cameron is still swimming in from its initial release.

The Expendables continues to play well, earning another $9.7 million to bring its total to $82 million, as does Eat Pray Love, which added another $6.8 million to bring its total to $60.5 million.  The Other Guys held its fifth place spot this weekend, inching within less than a million to reach the $100 million mark, and letting Will Ferrell know that the world has forgiven him for Land of the Lost.  Inception actually moved up from ninth to seventh with $4.8 million.  Its total now stands at $270 million domestically. 

Vampires Suck continues to suck (mostly for existing), dropping 52% and from second to sixth place this weekend.  It has now grossed an inexplicable $52 million.  Nanny McPhee Returns held its ground from last week, staying in eight place with another $4.7 million.  No one seems to care about The Switch, which is quickly fading from the top ten with just $4.5 million, and the novelty has already worn off for Piranha 3D, which drops from sixth to the tenth place with just $4.3 million.

It's no longer in the top ten (although it's better than most of movies currently in the list), but it's also worthy of note that Toy Story 3 become the seventh movie in history to cross the $1 billion mark worldwide this weekend.  It also marks the first time a studio has had two films gross more than $1 billion worldwide in a single year, with Disney's Alice in Wonderland earning $1.024 billion earlier this year.  Toy Story 3 should easily top Alice's worldwide gross, and if it continues to play well could even reign as Disney's highest-grossing film if it passes Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest's worldwide gross of $1.066 billion.  Anything's possible.

Stay tuned next week, when Machete, The American and Going the Distance battle each other out for first place on Labor Day Weekend.