The Help tops the US box office

After hogging top spot for the last two weeks, Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes was toppled by Disney’s The Help this weekend.

Bringing in just shy of $20.5 million, The Help was down just 21% on last weekend, suggesting it should have the legs to stick around the upper echelons of the box office chart for a while to come.

The take leaves the film’s overall gross at $71.8 million and it looks a good bet to break the $100 million mark in the coming weeks. ROTPOTA has already reached that milestone, with a $16.3 million weekend taking its overall tally to $133.8 million.

Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids 4 was the highest-placed new entry, with the latest instalment of junior sleuthing taking third place with $12 million. Fellow newbie Conan The Barbarian was fourth with $10 million, a disappointing return on its $70 million outlay.

Fright Night fared even worse, with an $8.3 million weekend only enough to take fifth place. The Smurfs continued to impress in sixth, adding another $8 million to the pot, whilst the fifth Final Destination movie took just under that amount in seventh place.

Jesse Eisenberg comedy 30 Minutes Or Less took $6.3 million in eighth, whilst One Day endured a shocking opening weekend with just $5.1 million in the bag. Crazy Stupid Love props up the top ten, taking a little less than $5 million.

Next week sees a trio of new releases hoping to perform better than this week’s collection of flops. They are Zoe Saldana’s Colombiana , the Guillermo Del Toro produced Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark and Paul Rudd vehicle Our Idiot Brother .

UPDATE: According to a report by the Guardian , The Inbetweeners Movie has broken box office records in the UK with a whopping £13.2m take (including Wednesday and Thursday previews).

That gives the spinoff the largest ever opening for a UK comedy, toppling previous record holder Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason . Blimey. Reckon we'll be seeing a sequel soon then?

George was once GamesRadar's resident movie news person, based out of London. He understands that all men must die, but he'd rather not think about it. But now he's working at Stylist Magazine.