‘Eclipse’ Stomps Competition At Box Office; ‘Last Airbender’ Whimpers
The top two slots at the box office on the Fourth Of July weekend were no surprise to anyone, as “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” and “The Last Airbender” debuted to the front of the pack. However, there are patches of gray in their silver linings.
“Eclipse” started strong, as expected, with the highest midnight debut in history (beating “Twilight” predecessor “New Moon” by a few shillings) with a $30 million take. It’s five-day total sits at a whopping estimate of $162 million, yet even this take can be seen as a disappointment, as Summit Entertainment was projecting a $175 million take over the Fourth of July weekend. “New Moon” earned $165 million in the same time last November.
“The Last Airbender,” however, didn’t fare nearly as well. Poor reviews – the worst of director M. Night Shyamalan’s career – and backlash from “everything must be in 3D!” marketing brought the anime adaptation to its knees, with an estimated weekend take of $40.6 million.
Third place went to “Toy Story 3,” dropping from first place with an estimated $30.1 million. Each of the returning top ten films showed drops of 49% or greater.
“Cyrus” expanded into 77 theaters nationally, cracking the top ten with a weekend estimated take of $770,000.
Here’s the top ten, courtesy of BoxOfficeMojo.com:
| TW | LW | Title (click to view) | Weekend Gross | % Change | Total Gross | Budget* |
| 1 | N | The Twilight Saga: Eclipse |
$69,000,000 | - | $161,000,000 | $68 |
| 2 | N | The Last Airbender | $40,650,000 | - | $57,000,000 | $150 |
| 3 | 1 | Toy Story 3 | $30,174,000 | -49.1% | $289,000,000 | $200 |
| 4 | 2 | Grown Ups | $18,500,000 | -54.3% | $77,082,000 | $80 |
| 5 | 3 | Knight & Day | $10,200,000 | -49.4% | $45,508,000 | $117 |
| 6 | 4 | The Karate Kid | $8,000,000 | -48.5% | $151,523,000 | $40 |
| 7 | 5 | The A-Team | $3,025,000 | -51.2% | $69,116,000 | $110 |
| 8 | 6 | Get Him to the Greek | $1,185,000 | -62.3% | $57,427,000 | $40 |
| 9 | 7 | Shrek Forever After | $799,000 | -74.2% | $232,182,000 | $165 |
| 10 | 20 | Cyrus | $770,000 | +155.6% | $1,488,000 | $7 |
