Corona | Coming Attractions

The three-day box office estimates are in and it appears that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 has just barely beat Disney's new CG 'toon Tangled.  According to the weekend preliminary figures, Deathly Hallows racked up $50.3 million dollars in its second weekend of release; that gives the seventh Harry Potter film an astounding $220 million domestic gross in just 10 days.

Tangled, the new kid on the block, landed an equally as impressive $49.1m over the weekend. Since the movie opened last Wednesday, Tangled's total domestic gross is $69 million.

These are both terrific figures for both movies, and a great sign for movie studios that the 2010 holiday season stands to be a rewarding one for them.

Paramount/DreamWorks Animation's Megamind tumbled one spot to #3 with $12.8m in new ticket sales. Its accumulated gross to date stands now at $130.4m.

In fourth place is Burlesque, Christina Aguilera's chance to see if she can make it topping a movie. With heavy competition from the animated and fantasy pictures, all that Burlesque could manage to scrouge up from audiences is $11.8m.

Fifth place went to Fox's Unstoppable with $11.5m in new money. After three weeks the Denzel Washington/Chris Pine thriller as made $60 million dollars.

Fox also released Love and Other Drugs, the romantic comedy starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. The promise of two good looking people taking their clothing off and clowning around only ratched up $9.8m, but since this film didn't need banks of computers to create its non-existant special effects, it's a win for its makers.

Not so fortunate was Dwayne Johnson and his new action flick, Faster. Debuting in seventh place isn't going to rev anyone's engines, but looking at the marketing push gives something of an explanation for Faster's poor performance. Who was the target audience for this film? Fox did a good job of getting asses into seats for the first weekend showing of Unstoppable so why couldn't CBS Films do the same for its action picture? Part of the answer probably lies with where and to whom Faster was marketed, and making appearances on the Ellen Degeneres show ain't going to do it. Plus, for an action film, it had a boring trailer, didn't it?

Due Date drops four spots to wind up at #8 ($7.3m new, $85m total.) Russell Crowe and The Next Three Days also tumbles four spots to ninth spot ($4.8m new, $14.5m total.) And whatddya know, Morning Glory is also down four positions to wind up at #10 ($4.0m new, $26.4m total.)

Next week we get to take a breather from the mega-marketed releases so I expect Harry Potter and Tangled to tussle once again for #1. Look for Thurston McQ's weekly box office predictions to show up on CA on Friday.