Sylvester Stallone, Not Scott Pilgrim, an Epic of Epicness—but What About Julia Roberts?

Sylvester Stallone, Not Scott Pilgrim, an Epic of Epicness—but What About Julia Roberts?

by Joal Ryan Sun., Aug. 15, 2010 3:01 PM PDT

Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, The Expendables

Karen Ballard/Lionsgate

Sylvester Stallone is back. Julia Roberts is getting there.

Stallone's The Expendables blew away the weekend box office with an estimated $35 million, while Roberts' second-place Eat Pray Love ($23.7 million) scored the actress' best debut in nearly 10 years.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, meanwhile, the supposedly epic Michael Cera geek comedy, bowed with an unpromising $10.5 million, made a discouraging $3,735 per screen, and further proved that Comic Con buzz doesn't always sound like much outside of San Diego.

Drilling down into the numbers:

• At age 64, Exhibitor Relations pointed out, Stallone has the biggest opener of his career. The Rocky/Rambo legend wrote, directed and shot up bad guys in The Expendables.

• The Expendables showed the big-screen The A-Team how it's done. Stallone's throwback action flick, featuring fellow old-schoolers Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts and Mickey Rourke, opened $10 million bigger than the earlier retro-vibing action flick—and cost tens of millions less.

• No, Eat Pray Love didn't have the firepower of The Expendables, but for a $60 million movie about the spiritual power of pasta, it was its own kind of strong, opening in the neighborhood of Julie & Julia, last year's $40 million movie about the connective powers of beef bourguignon.

• Eat Pray Love is the biggest opener for a Julia Roberts Movie (aka, not the Ocean's Eleven franchise) since 2001's America's Sweethearts.

• At least the people who saw Scott Pilgrim liked it. Its opening-weekend audience graded the movie an A-minus.

• And the hits keep coming for Toy Story 3 ($2.2 million), which slipped from the Top 10 after an eight-weekend run, but became only the 11th movie in Hollywood history to top $400 million domestically.

• Angelina Jolie's Salt ($6.4 million) is hanging in there—it just broke $100 million domestically.

Here's a complete look at the weekend's top-grossing films, per Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo: