Was Hugh Jackman's Real Steel Real Huge? Well...

Big-budget robot movie does OK at weekend box office; George Clooney's Ides of March has a George Clooney opening (even with Ryan Gosling on hand)

Boxing robots and Hugh Jackman.

Real Steel was just what this fall of box-office flops needed.

Um, right?

It's true, Hollywood did need a new movie that didn't bust, and Real Steel didn't bust.

The $110 million rock-'em, sock-'em saga debuted with nearly $50 million worldwide, including $27.3 million domestically, tops for the weekend. 

The overall gross was respectable; it was not, however, big enough to supplant The Lion King rerelease as the season's supreme box-office power. 

For Jackman, Real Steel marks a step up from almost all of his non-X-Men movies. Only Van Helsing, of that group, debuted bigger.

Elsewhere, George Clooney's grown-up movie, The Ides of March,  had the kind of opening George Clooney grown-up movies usually have, which is to say it did all right, all grown-up things considered. For busy costar Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March was his smallest-opening movie of the past three months, although Ides grossed more per theater than Drive did.

Among the holdovers, Dolphin Tale, last weekend's surprise No. 1 movie, dropped to third, but kept on doing its thing. Much the same could be said of Brad Pitt's Moneyball. After three weekends, each movie is at about $50 million domestically.

In its second weekend, Seth Rogen's and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's 50/50 held on OK. The $8 million buddy-cancer flick is now at $17.3 million overall.

Contagion was out of of the Top 10 after a month-long run. The movie's performance is subject to debate. At $76 million worldwide, per Box Office Mojo, did the $60 million movie do only so-so considering its all-star cast, or did it do great considering its sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy-head, fever so-you-can't-rest-at-night-thinking-about-it plot?

Killer Elite, meanwhile, is an outright bomb. The $70 million Jason Statham movie, out of the Top 10 after only a two-weekend stay, is at just about $30 million worldwide.

Here's a complete look at the weekend's top movies, per Friday-Sunday estimates as compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

1. Real Steel, $27.3 million
2. The Ides of March, $10.4 million
3. Dolphin Tale, $9.2 million
4. Moneyball, $7.5 million
5. 50/50, $5.5 million
6. Courageous, $4.6 million
7. The Lion King, $4.6 million
8. Dream House, $4.5 million
9. What's Your Number?, $3.1 million
10. Abduction, $2.9 million