Kevin James enjoyed a second weekend at the top of the box office with his first leading role as Paul Blart: Mall Cop narrowly beating Underworld: Rise of the Lychans. Brendan Fraser’s latest adventure flick, Inkheart, stumbled out of the gates opening in seventh place and this weekend also saw a major surge for award winner Slumdog Millionaire and a minor one for multiple Academy Award nominee The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. 

Paul Blart: Mall Cop had a great second weekend dropping a slim 33% to gross $21.5M, right in line with my $19M forecast. This brings its total up to an impressive $64.8M. Mall Cop should end its run in the vicinity of $110M, making James a bankable leading man in this genre and possibly a future as the King of Screens.

The third entry in the Underworld franchise, Rise of the Lychans posted respectable numbers and finished in second place. Lychans grossed $20.7M, slightly better than my $18M projection and right in line with the opening weekend grosses of the previous entries in the series. The number is pretty impressive considering Lychans didn’t have the benefit of franchise star Kate Beckinsale’s presence. The bad news is that the audience for this movie is front loaded with fans of the series and therefore a drop of 60 – 65% could be in store for this weekend.

After back to back $100M+ hits this summer, Brendan Fraser couldn’t pull off a hat trick with his third adventure film in less than a year, Inkheart. Industry expectation were not too high for this movie and it still managed to disappoint, grossing a paltry $7.7M and opening in seventh place, way below my (and everyone else’s) $12M prediction. After an unusually kick ass January box office, the way Inkheart opened made me finally feel like it was a typical January, the time of year that studios burn off the films that they feel aren’t going to perform well.

On the strength of 10 Oscar nominations and winning the top prize at both the SAG awards and the Producers Guild of America, Slumdog Millionaire jumped an astounding 80% to gross $10.5M for the weekend, its eleventh at the box office. This was above my (what I thought was) high forecast of $9.3M. On the heels of its 13 Oscar nods, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button found its way back into the top 10 and added another $6M to its $100M+ gross. Despite no love from the Academy, Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, continued to hold up well, dropping a slim 27% and collecting $16M. This brings the veteran stars latest film to a very impressive $97.6M overall and it should pass the century mark sometime before next Friday. To see how the rest of my predictions fared, check out the chart below.