Inception Holds Off Schmucks For Another Weekend Victory

Inception keeps on rolling showing some terrific legs based on its great word of mouth. The Christopher Nolan film has won its third consecutive weekend at the box office. This time it outdid expectations by topping the Steve Carell-Paul Rudd comedy Dinner for Schmucks. The other two new openers, Cats and Dogs 2 and Charlie St. Cloud, performed decently but were likely disappointments for their respective studios who had higher expectations.

Pulling in another $27.5 million was good enough for Inception to hold onto the top spot. That represented a fall of just 35% and along with continued strong weekday numbers it is nearing the $200 million mark. It will likely cross that milestone on Tuesday. Combining international totals the film has already made over $360 million. Remarkable considering many looked at it as a risk, that it may have been too complex and too original to catch on with a wide audience.

In second place it was Dinner for Schmucks with $23.3 million. The comedy had the star power of Steve Carell and Paul Rudd, who while they don’t deliver blockbusters consistently seem to open in the high teens to high 20s and that was the case yet again. Reviews on the film were mixed (I wasn’t a fan of it – my review) but ultimately it may have just been a little too silly with a title that may have even been offensive to some. It likely won’t have the staying power of Date Night, Carell’s most recent release, which opened a little higher and then outperformed all expectations over the long run making $98 million. There isn’t really any buzz or word-of-mouth to carry Dinner for Schmucks over the coming weeks and it will struggle to reach its $69 million budget.

Two weaker performers were Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore and Charlie St. Cloud. Cats and Dogs 2, a sequel to a film 10 years old, really wasn’t asked for by anyone and audiences didn’t buy into it delivering only a $12.5 million take. For a cheap family film that normally wouldn’t be all that bad, but this one had an $85 million budget. Charlie St. Cloud made $12.1 million which could probably be considered a disappointment with Zac Efron’s crowd not coming out in full force.