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Summary The Hunger Games held off The Three Stooges to remain the No. 1 weekend movie.
Movie fans have chosen real violence over the slapstick variety as The Hunger Games held off The Three Stooges to remain the No. 1 weekend movie.Lionsgates The Hunger Games, the blockbuster about teens competing in a televised fight to the death, stayed on top for a fourth-straight weekend with $21.5 million. That raises the films domestic total to $337.1 million.Peter and Bobby Farrellys slapstick update The Three Stooges opened in second-place with $17.1 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.That was well above industry expectations of around $10 million for the 20th Century Fox update starring Chris Diamantopoulos as Moe, Sean Hayes as Larry and Will Sasso as Curly.Fox executives had figured the movie would appeal mainly to young males. But it also pulled in older men who grew up on the Stooges and a fair number of women and girls as whole families turned out to see it, said Chris Aronson, the studios head of distribution.If youre predisposed to open your mind, its a laugh riot, Aronson said.The acclaimed horror tale The Cabin in the Woods debuted in third-place with $14.9 million. A smart, twisting take on the genre produced and co-written by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the long-delayed Cabin in the Woods had been one of the films caught up in MGMs bankruptcy but was finally released by Lionsgate.On the 100th anniversary of the ships sinking on April 15, 1912, the 3-D version of James Camerons Titanic sailed past the $2 billion mark worldwide.Titanic is just the second blockbuster to top $2 billion, trailing only the next film Cameron made the sci-fi sensation Avatar, which took in $2.8 billion.Domestically, Titanic held the No. 4 spot with $11.6 million. The 3-D re-release has taken in $44.4 million domestically to lift the films lifetime total to $645.2 million.Titanic also pulled in $88.2 million in 69 overseas markets, including a huge $58 million 3-D debut in China. That brought the 3-D reissues overseas total to $146.4 million and the worldwide sum for re-release to $190.8 million.Added to the $1.84 billion take from the original release of the 1997 hit, Titanic has climbed to a lifetime total of about $2.03 billion.Another big overseas haul came with Universals Battleship, which opened with $58 million in 26 countries five weeks ahead of its U.S. debut on May 18. The action tale featuring Taylor Kitsch and Liam Neeson is inspired by the game Battleship.The Hunger Games added $15 million overseas to bring its international total to $194 million and its worldwide haul to $531 million.The weekends other new domestic wide release, Film Districts sci-fi story Lockout, opened at No. 9 with $6.3 million. The movie stars Guy Pearce trying to quell an uprising at an orbiting space prison.
