The American outruns Machete at box office

George Clooney

George Clooney’s new thriller The American opened at the top of the box office this weekend, beating both newcomers Machete and Going The Distance .

Clearly Clooney’s still got it, as the silver fox drew audiences to the trill of $12m, while last week's joint numero unos Takers slipped to second, and T he Last Exorcism tumbled to fourth with $7.7m.

Machete burst onto the scene in third place with $11.3m, while other new opener Going The Distance topped off the top five with $6.8m.

The Expendables proved they were anything but by retaining a position in the top ten, dropping from third to sixth with $6.5m, The Other Guys bagged seventh place and a further $5.4m, while Eat Pray Love dove from fourth to eight with $4.8m.

After eight weeks in the charts, Inception still proved a draw, landing the ninth place and taking $4.5m, and Nanny McPhee Returns clung to tenth place with $3.7m.

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.