Before I recount the gory details of Battleship‘s disastrous opening weekend, it behooves me to let you know yet again that The Avengers won the weekend. I adore The Avengers, but it has made so much money so fast that we are just about out of things to say about it in the Box Office report.

It settled a measly 46.6% for another $55+ million at the domestic box office. The Avengers scored a few more speed records, such as fastest film to $450 Million domestic, in 10 less days than the next best film. Next weekend will be interesting though, its first (potentially) non-first place hold will give a decent indication of how big of a final total we can expect.

The good news for Battleship is that it isn’t a complete and utter disaster worldwide. With its international release weeks in the film has already made over $200 Million. Of course it made a paltry $25 Million here in the states and will be viewed as a the new John Carter (and THAT film’s reign as biggest cinematic black eye might end up short-lived).

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In its second weekend in release The Avengers brought in over $100 Million bucks. I will write that again for effect. In its second weekend in release The Avengers brought in over $100 Million bucks!

That absurd second weekend haul obliterates the second weekend record just as the debut frame obliterated records last week. For reference the previous best second weekend was Avatar with a bit over $75 million. The movie has already cleared a billion in total Box Office and it has only been in US cinemas for 10 days.

So yes, The Avengers continues to draw in the masses and shatter records left and right. At this point in time it seems plausible that the movie will end up as the third most successful film of all time. Why not the top slot if it is doing better than everything else right now? The start of the Summer season is just to hard of a spot for the movie to have the kind of legs required to break that pesky 2 billion dollar plateau.

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Normally this is a report about the top 10 in the weekends Box Office, a celebration of the entire spectrum of the week’s best performing movies. That will not be the case this week as The Avengers just demolished even the most generous expectations and became the first film ever to rake in over $200 Million dollars in a debut weekend.

You read that correct, The Avengers made an estimated $200.3 Million this weekend at the Box Office. For reference the next closest film was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 which brought in over $169 Million in its opening frame. Kudos to me for the prediction last week.

There is a fitting symmetry for Marvel this week, as it was the original Spider-Man movie in 2001 that was the first to breach the $100 Million Dollar plateau. In the twelve years since that first triple digit weekend five of the films to achieve the mark were based on Marvel properties, the most of any single franchise.

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Domestically this was a very weak weekend. The defending champion held its crown among a very unimpressive selection of new challengers. Think Like A Man dropped about 47% to bring in around $18 Million. The back-to-back wins catapulted the film passed Titanic 3D as the highest grossing film released this month.

The second place finisher was the most recent stop-motion animated film from the guys over at Aardman Studios. The Pirates! Band of Misfits did typically weak for the British Animation Studio who has yet to have a huge box office win despite a quality of output that ranks right up with PIXAR.

The Lucky One sputtered into third place with just over $11 Million, representing a 50% drop over its debut weekend. If the number seems low that’s because it is. The weekend as a whole was incredibly light compared to last year. All of this has the distinct feel of the quiet before the storm as The Avengers comes out next week.

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While there are some haters out there who think a superhero mega movie isn’t worth the time spent on popcorn, the majority of the country, and now, the world, seem to disagree. Disney and Marvel’s The Avengers opened up in specific worldwide screens this weekend, a week ahead of the domestic release on May 4th, and have already superseded expectations in their market, breaking records in Australia by having the second biggest opening weekend of all time behind the final Harry Potter film.

THR breaks down the rest.

The Marvel Studios and Disney tentpole grossed $6 million, compared to $7 million for Deathly Hallows Part 2. And Avengers opened 214 percent ahead of Iron Man 2 ($1.8 million).

Avengers, which is beginning its foreign rollout a week ahead of its domestic launch on May 4, also did record business in Taiwan, scoring the best Wednesday opening gross of all time in earning $1.2 million.

The tentpole is setting down in a total of 42 foreign markets this weekend. Avengers is expected to be a box office monster, both domestically and overseas. In North America, it could debut north of $150 million, based on the sizable strength of pre-release tracking.

Not too shabby for a film about a group of dysfunctional teammates who take down an alien race, right? Catch Avengers in theaters next Friday.

After a very impressive run, The Hunger Games has finally fallen from the top spot of the box office. It held well again, dropping only 31% and bringing in an estimated $14.5 Million, but at the end of the day it was time for a new hit to take over champion duties, and Think Like A Man is a hit.

Bringing in $33 Million, Think Like A Man ranks as one of the biggest openings of the year. The movie surpassed the expectations and becomes another victory notch in Sony’s belt on the year. When you compare Think Like A Man’s opening with other like films it is ahead of nearly all of them. The strong weekend also ranks as Screen Gem’s third number one opening of the year.

Coming in at number two is the next in a seemingly endless line of romantic films hoping to rekindle The Notebook’s fervor. The Lucky One pulled in nearly $23 Million, which actually made more than Nicholas Sparks’ most famous adaptation. However, like another recent Sparks adaptation, Dear John, more money doesn’t translate to more popularity.

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Kind of hard to not sound redundant at this point, but The Hunger Games once again beats off a flurry of new comers and takes the weekend. With a very solid hold from last weekend, the adaptation has now brought in over $337 Millions dollars. There  is no reason the film wont play well over the next few weeks and the box office world braces itself for a huge summer.

Unforgivably, The Three Stooges came in at second place with $17.a Million over the weekend. This actually represents the third highest opening for a Farrelly Brothers film which seems like encouragement for the future of these types of films. The general success of the film isn’t repulsive because of the film itself, but more so because it goes on record as beating whats at number 3.

The spectacular The Cabin in the Woods debuted in the third slot this weekend with a hair under $15 Million. In context to what the film is, and how it was marketed, that is a pretty solid number. It just stings a bit that a film as effective and crowd pleasing as this isn’t going to have a bigger audience in the movie theater.

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Yep, The Hunger Games wins again. The mega-hit has fended off the advances of two strong opponents to retain it’s Box Office crown for at least one more week. Bringing in over $33 Million dollars over the Easter weekend The Hunger Games now stands at over $300 Million in just three weeks.

The rest of the top three this week were dominated by 90′s nostalgia fare. Both came out with respectable numbers, especially considering the context of their release. Even still, neither could muster enough bank to truly challenge for the top spot.

Coming in at second was the fourth theatrical American Pie film, American Reunion. While it is true that its $ 21.5 Million dollar take is not very impressive compared to the previous films, the release of any R-Rated, raunchy comedy on Easter weekend is going to suffer. Considering that, and the bad will the franchise suffered from a long stretch of poor direct-to-DVD spin off films, you have to look at American Reunion as a win.

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Last week saw the debut of the monster hit The Hunger Games. This week that film held well enough to keep an iron grip on the weekend box office. Raking in an estimated $61 Million over the weekend, the super sized block buster is now over $250 Million in just over a week.

The movie did drop over 60% from it’s opening last weekend, but in comparison to films like the Twilight series that is a decent hold. Especially when you take into consideration that films like these are notoriously front loaded, the second weekend take for The Hunger Games is impressive.

Coming in at number two this weekend was Wrath of the Titans, the sequel to the 2010 film Clash of the Titans. With a total of $34 Million, Wrath brought in only just better than half of the original’s open in the similar weekend two years ago. Given the current trend of sequels performing at levels similar to the reception of the previous film, this low number had to be expected.

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Last week I made mention that this weekend would be dominated by The Hunger Games. I never like to revel in such an easy victory, but for this week I will grant myself a little pardon.

The weekend was dominated by the new film that captured everyone’s hearts. The Hunger Games brought in a staggering $155 Million at the box office.  In just three days the film has already become the highest grossing film from Lionsgate productions ever.

The monstrous opening number is the third highest all time, coming in third behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2 and The Dark Knight. The number was also the highest among all non-sequels and non-franchises of all time.

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The Lorax is the big winner of the box office this weekend, bringing in a massive 70.7 million. This is a monumental number and further proof that the concept of prime seasons being the only way a film can make bank is dead.

We are now in the thick of the ‘Spring Movie Season’ which for the last few years has yielded some of the most successful and surprising films of the years. The staggering numbers for The Lorax also represent a bit of a coming out for Universal’s animation house Illumination Entertainment, which previously won a lot of people over with the very fun Despicable Me.

The impressive haul also marks a new high water mark for Dr. Seuss adaptions, topping the previous high of 55.1 million raked in by How The Grinch Stole Christmas. The film is likely to have a decent run as well with few marquee kids films on the immediate horizon, and mixed reviews that do tend to skew a bit towards positive.

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After a weekend like this one, it goes to show that American audiences are still very much into the combat of war, soldiers in action lifestyle, as the real life battle movie Act of Valor made it to the #1 spot with $24 Million for the weekend.

With a production budget of only $12 Million, this is pretty impressive. Also impressive, the fact that Valor managed to nearly double Tyler Perry’s new film Good Deeds, which normally pull in pretty big numbers. Deeds only managed to make $16 Million for the weekend.

Also hitting this weekend, David Wain and Ken Marino’s comedy follow-up to Role Models, Wanderlust, had a pretty lame opening weekend with only $6.6 Million in over 2,000 screens. Is it the Jennifer Aniston curse? Maybe.

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