Disney “It” boy, Zac Efron proved his career has a future this weekend as he propelled 17 Again to a #1 debut. Russell Crowe’s latest film, political thriller, State of Play, had a solid debut in second place, while Jason Statham’s latest action entry, Crank: High Voltage, opened feebly in sixth place.

Zac Efron proved that he can open a film outside of the Disney umbrella with comedy, 17 Again. The movie had no trouble claiming the top spot, earning an impressive $24.1M, exactly as I predicted. This was Efron’s first leading role outside of High School Musical and the pressure for this film to perform was unbelievable. Reviews have been solid and with any luck, 17 Again should display solid legs in the weeks to come, creating new fans for the former Troy Bolton (his HSM role). I think the film can easily find its way to about $80M when all is said and done. Pretty impressive when you factor in that 17 Again rehashes a plotline that grew tired in the late 80’s.

Political thriller, State of Play enjoyed a solid opening in second place with $14.1M, a notch above my $13M prediction. Russell Crowe leads a stellar cast including Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren and Rachel McAdams and the film has received mostly positive reviews. State of Play targets a more mature audience that generally doesn’t rush out to see movies on their opening weekends, so it should perform well over the next few weeks. My guess is that it will end up with about $60M.

Jason Statham’s action sequel, Crank: High Voltage, stumbled out of the gates, grossing a mere $6.5M (much lower than my $9M forecast) to land in sixth place. The original Crank opened 3 years ago to $10.5M and the sequel was largely expected to exceed that amount, but Crank: High Voltage is Statham’s 5^th action film to be released in as little as a year, so it seems his audience may be growing fatigued. Seth Rogen ran into this same problem last weekend with the opening of Observe and Report to a dismal $11M. It is true what they say… Sometimes less truly is more.

Among holdovers, Disney princess, Miley Cyrus’ Hannah Montana: The Movie dropped an understandable 61% to take in another $12.7M. A drop like that is to be expected with a front loaded audience and was in perfect sync with my $12.8M prediction. Hannah now stands at $56.1M after 10 days and should end up with about $75M total. Observe and Report plummeted 63% to gross $4M in its second outing. This was even worse than the 60% drop I predicted. Rogen should have better luck next time when he co-stars with Adam Sandler in this summer’s Funny People. To see how the rest of my predictions fared, check out the chart below.