Christopher Nolan has more than one trick up his utility belt.
Inception, the Caped Crusader director's latest, ruled the weekend box office with a bigger-than-expected, bigger-than-Batman Begins $60.4 million.
Nicolas Cage's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, meanwhile, was outta luck.
The $150 million-ish Disney extravaganza managed only $17.4 million from Friday-Sunday, and only $24.5 million overall since opening Wednesday.
Drilling down into the numbers:
• Inception is the summer's biggest debut for a non-franchise flick, à la Iron Man 2, and a non-reboot, à la The Karate Kid. Or, in other words, it's the summer's biggest debut for a new idea.
• At $160 million reportedly, Nolan's Leonardo DiCaprio dream thriller was more expensive than Batman Begins. It was also more successful than that 2005 relaunch, which bowed with $48.7 million. (Nolan's The Dark Knight is another story, obviously.)
• Inception is now the biggest opener, by far, of DiCaprio's career. (Titanic, remember, was a marathon runner, not a sprinter.)
• As Prince of Persia proved again this summer, it's not over until the foreign box office is all counted. So, no, it's not over for The Sorcerer's Apprentice, which is a good thing for Disney because the movie's worldwide grand total right now is not so grand: $32.8 million. (To be fair, it hasn't opened in a lot of foreign markets yet.)
• Eclipse vs. New Moon watch: After 19 days, Eclipse is at $264.9 million domestically; at the same time in its run, New Moon was at $257.5 million.
• Last weekend's champ, the 3-D-powered Despicable Me, got bumped down to second place, but otherwise held great. Its domestic total is now at $118.4 million.
• The indie comedy-drama The Kids Are All Right made $1 million and a run at the Top 10 (it just missed) on the "strength" of 38 theaters. Its per-screen average was the best of the weekend—even bigger than Inception's.
• The $110 million A-Team was out of the Top 10 after five forgettable weekends and $75.2 million domestically. (But, yup, it made its budget back overseas.)
Here's a complete look at the weekend's top-grossing films, per Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:
- Inception, $60.4 million
- Despicable Me, $32.7 million
- The Sorcerer's Apprentice, $17.4 million
- The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, $13.5 million
- Toy Story 3, $11.7 million
- Grown Ups, $10 million
- The Last Airbender, $7.5 million
- Predators, $6.8 million
- Knight and Day, $3.7 million
- The Karate Kid, $2.2 million
(Originally published July 18, 2010, at 10:52 a.m. PT)