Despicable Me topples Twilight

Taking a healthy $60m in ticket kerchings, the animated comedy starring the voices of Steve Carell, Russell Brand and Jason Segel knocked Eclipse into second place.

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Meanwhile, other new entry Predators opened in a healthy third place with $25m (not quite earning back its $40m budget, we give it another week), while Toy Story 3 came in at fourth with $22m and a titanic total gross of $340m. The top five closed with The Last Airbender , still performing well despite negative reviews, taking $17m.

Grown Ups slipped from fourth place to sixth for its third week on release, taking $16m, while Tom Cruise vehicle Knight & Day went from fifth to seventh and just $11m more for the money pot. We bet the Mission: Impossible IV guys are feeling a little bit antsy.

Attendance at screenings of The Karate Kid and The A-Team dropped, too, the former in eighth with $5.7m and the latter in ninth with $1.8m. And Cyrus had a late surge back into the top ten with $1.3m.

As an interesting aside, The Girl Who Played With Fire – Swedish sequel to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – opened disappointingly in 11th with a lacklustre $965,000, proving that American audiences really don’t like subtitles.

What did you see this weekend?

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.