As the only new movie in theatres, DreamWorks' Shrek the Third was expected to do huge amounts of family business this weekend, but it surpassed most expectations with an opening weekend of $122 million and an additional $900 thousand in Thursday night preview screenings, making it the third-largest opening ever and setting a new opening record for an animated feature, a record previously held by Shrek 2. While that amount might seem like a bit of a letdown compared to the recent record set by Spider-Man 3, especially after Shrek the Third's $39 million opening day, it's a respectable number for a family movie as well as a second sequel, having averaged a whopping $29,597 in its 4,122 theatres. (That's fewer theatres even than Shrek 2.) It's a great start for the DreamWorks animated film, and the first in the series distributed by Paramount, though it might be harder for it to attain the type of long-term box office of the previous sequel with Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End nipping at its heels next weekend.
Other than Shrek, the only other movie to make more than $6 million this weekend was Sony's Spider-Man 3, which took another hit in its third weekend, dropping 51% to $28.5 million and bringing its total North American gross to $281.8 million.
Fox Atomic's sequel 28 Weeks Later dropped 47% with $5.2 million in its second weekend, while DreamWorks' hit thriller Disturbia with Shia LaBeouf, pulled ahead of the pairing of Lindsay Lohan and Jane Fonda in Universal's Georgia Rule $3.7 million to the latter's $3.5 million.
The New Line thriller Fracture, starring Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling, had one of the best holds in the Top 10, dropping a mere 17% to remain in sixth place with $2.5 million.
Everything else made less than $2 million with a surprise entry into the Top 10 being the late Adrienne Shelly's Waitress, which opened in limited release two weeks ago and expanded into 116 theatres on Friday, allowing it to gross $1.1 million, an average of just under $10k per theatre. It will expand into over 500 theatres next weekend, which should allow it to remain in the Top 10 over Memorial Day weekend.
The only significant opening in limited release was John Carney's Once--this week's Chosen One--released in a single theatre in New York and L.A. by Fox Searchlight, where it made $60,000, strong signs for an expansion into other cities over the summer.
The top 10 movies grossed roughly $170 million, 12% higher than last year when DreamWorks' Over the Hedge didn't do nearly as well when facing Ron Howard and Tom Hanks' highly-anticipated adaptation of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
You can see the full box office estimates for the top 12 films here.
