"Cars" Goes Vroom!

Cars easily earned the checkered flag at the weekend box office, racing away with $60.1 million.

Although the prize money might not have been quite as big as expected, considering the buzz surrounding Disney-Pixar's vehicular 'toon, the top-ranked debut kept alive Pixar's record for number one openings, dating to Toy Story way back in 1995.

The CGI tale, the first release since Disney's acquisition of Pixar in January, didn't quite match up to the three previous entries: The Incredibles opened with $70.4 million in 2004; Finding Nemo swam in with $70.2 million in 2003; and Monsters, Inc. racked up $62.6 million in 2001.

Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations, says while Cars might not have lived up to the industry's "extremely high" expectations, Pixar's success is "indisputable." He also stresses that thanks to Cars, this was the fourth straight weekend that overall business was up over last year, surging 7 percent ahead of the same weekend in 2005.

And Chuck Viane, Disney's distribution chief, was all revved up, telling the Associated Press the opening was "an accomplishment of great proportion." "I think to use the baseball analogy, a home run is a home run in anybody's ballpark, whether it's 398 feet or 460 feet. This is a home run."

Cars, which features the voice of Owen Wilson as an egotistical rookie racer who discovers the meaning of heart after getting stranded in a small town populated by all sorts of folksy vehicles (voiced by the likes of Paul Newman, Bonnie Hunt and Larry the Cable Guy), opened at 3,985 sites, where it averaged $15,086 per screen--tops among all films in wide release.

Opening in seventh place in much more limited release was A Prairie Home Companion, which recorded $4.6 million. The PG-13 Picturehouse release, Robert Altman's fictionalized look at Garrison Keillor's quaint radio show and costarring Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson and Tommy Lee Jones, averaged $6,008 per screen at just 760 locations.

Meanwhile, Cars' arrival bumped The Break-Up to the runner-up slot. Universal's PG-13 non-romantic romantic comedy dropped 48 percent, earning another $20.3 million. Now playing in 3,075 locations, the critic-proof teaming on Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn averaged a solid $6,610, good news for the celebrity couple, who spent Sunday in Paris watching the French Open Tennis men's final.

In third place, dropping 53 percent from last weekend's second place, was X-Men: The Last Stand. Fox's PG-13 mutant flick scored $16.1 million, pushing its total to $202.2 million after just three weeks.

Fox was also finding success with its latest offering, The Omen, the remake of the 1976 horror story, this time starring Julia Stiles and Liev Schreiber as the parents with the devil kid, and Mia Farrow as the diabolical nanny. After audiences bought into the 6-6-06 advertising campaign, flocking to theaters to spend $12.6 million opening day (enabling the studio to lay claim to the best Tuesday debut on record), horror fans forked over $16 million from Friday to Sunday, enough for fourth place and pushing the film's gross to $36.3 million.

The Da Vinci Code, now in its fourth week, finished in fifth with $10.4 million. Sony's controversial PG-13 thriller has now grossed $189.2 million domestically, and is expected to pass $200 million next weekend. It remained the number one movie overseas.

DreamWorks' PG-rated CGI family film Over the Hedge, also in its fourth week, might have made a small dent in Cars' haul, finishing in sixth place with $10.2 million. The critter 'toon has now totaled $130.2 million.

Here's a recap of the top 10 films based on final studio figures compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

1. Cars, $60.1 million
2. The Break-Up, $20.3 million
3. X-Men: The Last Stand, $16.1 million
4. The Omen, $16 million
5. The Da Vinci Code, $10.4 million
6. Over the Hedge, $10.2 million
7. A Prairie Home Companion, $4.6 million
8. Mission: Impossible III, $3 million
9. RV, $1.9 million
10. Poseidon, $1.8 million

(Originally published June 11, 2006 at 12:50 p.m. PT.)