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?
