Tarantino had his most glorious debut ever as Basterds scalped its way to #1 with $37.6M, higher than most industry expectations and also higher than my $32M prediction. Check out the chart below to see how Quentin’s other films performed at the box office.

 

Basterds got off to a great start on Friday taking in $14.4M, dipped slightly on Saturday to score another $12.9M and then dropped another 20% on Sunday taking in $10.3M. Reviews for the film have been terrific (read my review here), as has word of mouth, but don’t expect Basterds to continue dominating at the box office. Tarantino has a large fan base that tends to come out on opening weekend, so ticket sales should continue to drop over the next week or so. Look for Inglorious Basterds to gross about $95M, more than enough to become Tarantino’s second biggest hit to date behind 1994’s Pulp Fiction.

Tarantino’s friend and frequent collaborator, Robert Rodriguez stumbled at the box office this weekend with the debut of his latest kid flick, Shorts. Shorts opened weakly in 6^th place with a paltry $6.6M, right on with my $6.5M forecast. That’s a fairly bad debut for a family movie, especially when you consider that even the god awful, Aliens in the Attic opened to $8M. This was the fifth family film from Rodriguez and his worst performer to date. 

 

Look for Shorts to find its way to about $15M before it disappears from theatres.

The last new film to enter the market place was Post Grad starring Alexis Bledel. Plagued with poor reviews and a poor marketing campaign the story of a college grad that must move back in with her parents failed to connect with audiences.  Grad debuted in 10^th place with the measly sum of $2.8M, right in line with my $3M projection. Post Grad will be all but forgotten by next weekend.

Among holdovers, District 9 slipped a reasonable 49% in its second outing to collect another $18.9M, very close to my $18.7M guess. The films total now stands at $73.5M after 10 days and should be headed slightly north of $100M by the end of the invasion. The Time Travelers Wife also fell an average 46% to gross another $10M, on target with my $10.2M prediction. Wife has collected $37.5M to date and should find its way to about $60M. To see how the rest of the top 10 shaped up and how all my predictions fared, check out the chart below.

Come back on Thursday for this weekend’s predictions when 2 horror movies duke it out; The Final Destination 3-D and Halloween 2. Also director Ang Lee takes us back to 1969 with his latest film, Taking Woodstock.

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