Audiences Wanted WALL-E, Jolie

WALL-E, Wanted lead potent weekend box office; Pixar film gets No. 1 spot with $62.5 mil

The robot fought Angelina Jolie to a draw.

WALL-E, the new Disney/Pixar film about a lonely little robot, grossed $62.5 million to top the weekend box office, according to Exhibitor Relations estimates today.

But pound for pound, Wanted was the bigger film.

Debuting at about 800 fewer theaters than WALL-E, Wanted, the Jolie action film, outgrossed the animated movie by nearly $500 per screen. It's a statistical win that can be credited to its star's pull with young men, yes, but also to its wealth of full-price admission tickets. (Wanted is rated R, while WALL-E is rated G for "good for a kid's discount.")

In the box office standings, Wanted finished second, with a $51.1 million take.

According to Box Office Mojo stats, WALL-E's opening was the best for a Pixar film since 2004's The Incredibles, and was a substantial upgrade over last summer's critically acclaimed though rat-addled entry, Ratatouille, which debuted with $47 million.

Wanted becomes Jolie's biggest opener ever, outdoing the first Lara Croft movie and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which costarred Brad Pitt.

The box office's latest one-two punch, coming a few weeks after the Kung Fu Panda/You Don't Mess with the Zohan combo, helped push Hollywood into the black. For the first time in a long while, ticket sales are up over where they were at this point last year. Overall attendance, however, is still down.

WALL-E and Jolie, after all, are only two people. Well, one robot and one pregnant-with-twins superstar.

Other notable box office doings:

• Last weekend's No. 1 movie, Steve Carell's Get Smart, fell to third, but hung tough (i.e., ticket sales were down less than 50 percent). Its $20 million gross pushed its overall take to $77.3 million.
• Last weekend's disappointment, Mike Myers' The Love Guru, fell from fourth to sixth, and saw its modest business plunge 61 percent. Its $5.4 million gross pushed, if that's the word, its overall take to, um, $25.3 million.
• Kung Fu Panda (fourth place, $11.7 million) kept on keeping on, and neared the $180 million cumulative mark.
• Sex and the City (ninth place, $3.8 million) moved past the $140 million mark.
• A moment of silence, please, for Iron Man, which slipped out of the top 10 after eight scorching weekends. The film still came up with another $2.3 million, and saw its league-leading overall gross hit $309.2 million.
• Also dropping out of the Top 10: the horror-thriller The Strangers ($611,000, per Box Office Mojo), which has $51.5 million in the bank after five solid weekends.
• Abigail Breslin's Kit Kittredge: An American Girl cleaned up again in limited release. The film took in $106,000 at five theaters, Box Office Mojo said. It goes wide on Wednesday.
• Trumbo, the new documentary about blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, did well, grossing $28,500 at three theaters.

Here's a recap of the top-grossing weekend films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

1. WALL-E, $62.5 million
2. Wanted, $51.1 million
3. Get Smart, $20 million
4. Kung Fu Panda, $11.7 million
5. The Incredible Hulk, $9.2 million
6. The Love Guru, $5.4 million
7. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, $5 million
8. The Happening, $3.9 million
9. Sex and the City, $3.8 million
10. You Don't Mess With the Zohan, $3.2 million