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Turtles Make Soup of 300

Sun., Mar. 25, 2007 3:27 PM PDT by Joal Ryan

And so it came to pass that 300 was vanquished by...a bunch of turtles.

TMNT, the CGI-animated restart of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise, scored a weekend-best $25.5 million at the box office, Exhibitor Relations Co. estimates said.

After two weekends at number one, the battle-tested 300 slipped to second, with a still-sizeable $20.5 million. All told, the manly man epic has bench-pressed $162.4 million, the year's biggest gross to date.

TMNT's win was big, but not huge. Among animated movies, its opening ranks between 1998's The Rugrats Movie ($27.3 million) and last year's Open Season ($23.6 million), and far, far away from the likes of the Pixar or Shrek movies, per Box Office Mojo stats.

Among previous crime-fighting turtle entries, TMNT's $25.5 million debut was the biggest yet, provided you don't account for inflation. The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, released back in 1990 when the reptiles were portrayed by people in theme-park costumes, and consumers were sufficiently literate to respond to non-abbreviated titles, opened with an even-more impressive $25.4 million, according to figures from Exhibitor Relations.

Among other major new releases, Mark Wahlberg's Shooter (third place, $14.5 million) was no The Departed, The Hills Have Eyes 2 (sixth place, $10 million) was no The Hills Have Eyes (2006 edition), and the swim-drama Pride (ninth place, $4 million) was no SwimFan.

Adam Sandler's latest serious turn did a little better than his last serious turn, with the buddy drama Reign Over Me (eighth place, $8 million) debuting with about as much as 2004's Spanglish, but on about 1,000 fewer screens. In general, serious Sandler remains no box-office match for funny Sandler.

The less said about The Last Mimzy perhaps the better. The children's fable, starring Timothy Hutton and Rainn Wilson, tanked, managing only $9.5 million on 3,017 screens. Playing at only about 100 more venues, TMNT took in more than twice as much money.

Elsewhere, Nicolas Cage's Ghost Rider ($1.7 million; $113.2 million overall) finished out of the Top 10 for the first time in six weekends; Eddie Murphy's Norbit ($1 million; $94.1 million overall) placed out of the Top 10 for the first time in seven weekends; and, Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife ($2.8 million; $10 million overall) ended up out of the Top 10 for the first time since, um, last Sunday, Box Office Mojo and Exhibitor Relations numbers showed.

In limited release, The Namesake ($1.4 million; $2.7 million overall) enjoyed its biggest take yet, the Vietnam drama Journey from the Fall took in a relatively strong $76,000 on only four screens, and the Hollywood tale Color Me Kubrick, starring John Malkovich, grossed a relatively weak $37,000 on 19 screens, online and studio estimates said.

Here's a rundown of the top 10 films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations: