Toy Story 3 jets off to infinity and beyond

Toy Story 3 proved that Pixar really are the gods of Hollywood this weekend – the animated threequel opened in first place to the trill of a mammoth $109m.

Yep, Woody and co were welcomed back with open arms after 10 years away from cinemas. They also showed this year’s other animated efforts how it’s done, easily trampling the opening weekends of Shrek Forever After ($70m) and How To Train Your Dragon ($43m).

The CG flick, which Pixar are saying will be the final Toy Story , has also been a massive critical as well as commercial success – over at Rotten Tomatoes , the movie stands at a deserved 99% fresh (from 157 counted reviews).

Okay, so that’s Toy Story 3 . What about the rest of the box office? Last week’s victor The Karate Kid proved a keeper, debunking to second place with a further $29m - and a total of $106m, qualifying those plans for a sequel.

Meanwhile, The A-Team proved another favourite in third with $13m, Get Him To The Greek stayed put at fourth with $6m and other CG sequel Shrek Forever After took another $5.5m.

The rest of the top ten languished in Toy Story 3 ’s shadow, with Prince Of Persia , Killers and Jonah Hex all taking around $5m each. The latter in particular suffered devastating reviews, and that piffling opening is sure to have Josh Brolin swearing off blockbusters for a while.

Finally, Iron Man 2 and Marmaduke settled for ninth and tenth place, with $2.6m a piece.

What does this mean for Toy Story ? The famously sequel-phobic Pixar dove-tailed this third entry so perfectly into the first that we'd hate to see it spoiled with a fourth flick. Hopefully they’ll take the booty landed this weekend and funnel it into future works of genius. We have no doubt that they will.

What did you see in cinemas this weekend?