It was a tight race for the box office crown this weekend with 3 new releases vying for the top spot. Nicolas Cage with his latest action flick, Knowing, managed to come in first, beating out Paul Rudd in bromantic comedy, I Love You, Man and Julia Roberts in spy caper, Duplicity, which opened in second and third respectively.

Despite poor reviews, Nicolas Cage powered Knowing to a $24.8M opening, enough to land in the top spot in front of some steep competition.  Knowing performed as one of the best openings (6^th best to be exact) of Cage's varied box office career, just below the $25M earned by The Rock way back in 1996. Of course, at todays ticket prices, The Rock would have outgrossed Knowing by quite a bit.  When adjusted for inflation, The Rock would have grossed an estimated $40.8M.  Take a look at Cage’s best openings.

1 - Ghost Rider  - 2007 -  $45.4M opening  $116M final
2 - National Treasure: The Book of Secrets – 2007 - $44.8M opening  $220M total
3 - National Treasure – 2004 - $35.1M opening $173M total
4 – Gone in 60 Seconds – 2000 - $25.4M opening $102M total
5 – The Rock – 1996 - $25M opening $134M

In the film, Cage plays a man who discovers a code that can predict disasters and it is up to him to save the world from an impending Armageddon. With no new action films on the horizon, Knowing should hold up pretty well over the next few weeks and may quietly approach the $100M mark when all is said and done.

I Love You, Man starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel opened with a solid $18M, right in the middle of what each of their last films opened to and slightly below my $20M prediction. Rudd’s Role Models opened to $19.2M while Segel’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall opened with $17.7M. Both wound up with final grosses in the mid $60M range. The reviews have been great and in this current climate at the box office, I think I Love You, Man will display sturdy legs and gross more money than both of them.

Julia Roberts first film to feature her in a lead role in over 5 years, Duplicity, opened in third place with a respectable $14.4M, almost exactly as I thought. In Duplicity, Roberts co-stars with Clive Owen as spies who are caught up in a game of corporate espionage. The film has received good reviews overall and the chemistry between Roberts and Owen is said to be terrific, which should help Duplicity over the next couple of weeks. Duplicity also skews to an older audience and they generally don’t rush out to theatres on opening weekend. I expect Duplicity to perform as a sleeper hit and may find its way to a $70M or $80M overall gross.

Among Holdovers, last weekend’s champ, Race to Witch Mountain, dropped a reasonable 47% to gross an additional $13M, right in line with my $13.4M forecast.  The real test for Witch Mountain comes this Friday when Monsters vs. Aliens hits multiplexes. Watchmen continued to drop significantly, falling 62%, to bring in another $6.7M. This brings the super hero saga to just short of the century mark with $98M in the bank so far. I thought it would perform slightly better and drop only 55%. To see how the rest of my predictions fared, check out the chart below.