Matt Damon, Jennifer Aniston and Megan Fox got dumped on. By a breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, the CGI family foodfest, led all films—and stars—with a 3-D-assisted $30.1 million Friday-Sunday, estimates showed.
Damon's The Informant! was actually a fairly fat second, with $10.5 million. But you had to scroll down further to find Aniston's rainy-day romantic drama Love Happens ($8.5 million) and Fox's horror-comedy Jennifer's Body ($6.8 million).
More results:
• The forecast for Meatballs remains a bit cloudy. On one hand, its debut was Hollywood's biggest since Inglourious Basterds'. On the other hand, it cost $100 million to produce. On the third hand we just made up in order to note that this thing could go either way, audience exit-polling scores were strong.
• Despite a pudgy, mustache-sporting leading man (Damon, making like Paul Blart), a quirky-as-usual director (Steven Soderbergh), 2-D ticket prices and a dearth of robots, spaceships and CGI anything, The Informant! was a bottom-line hit, earning back half of its reported $21 million budget.
• Considering Love Happens only cost $18 million, Aniston, who misfired with Steve Zahn in Management this past summer, probably will not be barred from ever teaming up again with Aaron Eckhart.
• Jennifer's Body played on more screens than either The Informant! or Love Happens, featured more shots of Megan Fox than either movie and still made less money. Fortunately for the filmmakers, their overhead was also relatively low: $16 million.
• Whiteout continued to demonstrate how a real bomb ticks. The $40 million Kate Beckinsale thriller dropped out of the top 10 after just one weekend. To date, its take stands at $8.5 million.
• Meryl Streep's Julie & Julia ended its top 10 stay after six weekends and $88.4 million.
• District 9's remarkable top 10 run came to a close after five weekends—and $111.6 million.
• Director Jane Campion's Bright Star ($190,343 at 19 theaters) proved poetry can be a pretty special effect. The period love story earned more money, screen for screen, than any other film reporting grosses.
Here's a look at the weekend's top-grossing films based on Friday-Sunday estimates as compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, $30.1 million
- The Informant!, $10.5 million
- Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All by Myself, $10.1 million
- Love Happens, $8.5 million
- Jennifer's Body, $6.8 million
- 9, $5.5 million
- Inglourious Basterds, $3.6 million
- All About Steve, $3.4 million
- Sorority Row, $2.5 million
- The Final Destination, $2.4 million
Now that you know how this weekend turned out, try guessing what's to come via our Movies From the Future gallery.