Weekend Box Office: July 22-24

Courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

1.  Captain America: The First Avenger - $65.8 million

2.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2 - $48 million

3.  Friends With Benefits - $18.5 million

4.  Transformers: Dark of the Moon - $12 million

5.  Horrible Bosses - $11.7 million

6.  Zookeeper - $8.7 million

7.  Cars 2 - $5.7 million

8.  Winnie the Pooh - $5.1 million

9.  Bad Teacher - $2.6 million

10.  Midnight in Paris - $1.8 million

Way to go, Cap!

Captain America: The First Avenger put the naysayers to rest this weekend, opening with an estimated $65.8 million.  That's better than the disappointing opening for X-Men: First Class (although X-Men didn't have the benefit of 3D, which probably wouldn't have helped much anyway) and the tepid response for last month's Green Lantern, instead putting it on the level with Thor's $65 million opening back in May.  This bodes well for when the whole Marvel gang gets the band back together for The Avengers, which will kick off next year's summer movie season in May.

Judging from the audience response at the sight of Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America in the post-credits Avengers teaser at the showing of Captain America I saw this morning (the guy behind me was literally hyperventilating), I think The Avengers is likely to make a crapload of money next summer.

However, the 3D craze continues to fade at the box office:  only 40% of the sales for Captain America were for 3D showings this weekend.

In second place was Harry Potter and the Measly $834 Million Worldwide Gross.  Traditionally, the Harry Potter films drop like a rock in their second weekend, since the majority of their fanbase gets it out of their system during the opening weekend.  Deathly Hallows 2 continued that tradition, dropping 72% to finish out the weekend with $48 million.  That's a huge drop - the biggest of any of the Harry Potter films - but let's be real:  it's already grossed $274 million domestically, $560 million overseas, pushed the franchise past the $7 billion mark this week, and just knocked the Star Wars movies out of the way to become the highest-grossing movie franchise of all time.  It's all good.

This weekend's other new release, Friends With Benefits, opened with an OK $18.5 million.  That's just below the $19.7 million that No Strings Attached, which is basically the same movie, opened with earlier this year.  It's also worth pointing out that two of the film's in this week's top ten star Justin Timberlake, as Bad Teacher inched closer to the $100 million mark with $2.6 million this weekend.

Tranformers continues to play well, earning another $12 million to bring its domestic total up to $325 million.  Overseas, the movie has earned $556 million.  That makes it the highest-grossing movie of the year so far, although that's likely to be overtaken by Harry Potter within the next few weeks.  Horrible Bosses also continues its strong box office run, dropping only 34% to earn $11.7 million.

Next weekend sees the release of Cowboys & Aliens.  Should be interesting to see how this holds up against Captain America next week.  I think it looks pretty cool, but the jury is still out as to whether or not audiences have warmed up to the concept yet.  Stay tuned...