It seems like people can’t get enough of the movies. This was the largest President’s Day weekend in box office history, hot on the heels of a record breaking Martin Luther King weekend just a few short weeks ago. What’s going on? Is it the quality of the movies currently playing in multiplexes everywhere? I don’t think so. Could it be that the state of the economy has people so worried that they need the 2 hour escape from their lives that movies so ably provide? That seems about right. People will always turn to entertainment to get through the dark times. Just look at the top 10 this weekend. The steepest decline was for the movie Push, which dropped only 32%. Normally a movie like Push would have a drop of 50% or more in its second weekend. Even the critically maligned Pink Panther sequel dropped a mere 22% from its disastrous opening last weekend. Paul Blart: Mall Cop was actually up 8% in its fifth week of release. Truly unbelievable. Enough of that though, let’s get to the new films for the weekend. The revival of Friday the 13^th scored big time easily taking the #1 spot, Confessions of a Shopaholic opened impressively in fourth and Clive Owen’s The International opened to so so numbers at #7

Producer Michael Bay has been successfully remaking every horror movie franchise from the 80’s and truly hit it big with the return of Jason Vorhees in Friday the 13^th. Jason managed to hack out $42.2M out of the box office this weekend, right in line with my $43M prediction, making Friday the 13^th the most successful horror relaunch to date. We’ll see if Jason can hold on to that record when Bay revives A Nightmare on Elm Street sometime next year. My guess is that Freddy Krueger is going to kick Jason’s ass, but we’ll have to wait and see. Friday the 13^th will have a massive drop next weekend, probably about 60% or so.

Confessions of a Shopaholic starring Isla Fisher as a shopping obsessed New Yorker opened in fourth place with a respectable $15.4M, very close to my $16M forecast. Shopaholic is the very definition of a chick flick and should continue to perform well with the ladies over the next few frames. Look for Confessions of a Shopaholic to earn about $60M by the end of its theatrical run, making it a bona fide hit.

The last new film to open this past weekend was the crime thriller, The International starring Clive Owen. With steep competition from Liam Neeson’s Taken and mixed reviews, The International managed a fairly weak opening of $10M (exactly what I predicted), opening in 7^th place. The good news is that the audience for this movie is not heavily front loaded, so The International does have a chance to make some money. Look for a 40% drop next weekend as The International attempts to stay in the top 10.

As I mentioned earlier, the holdovers from prior weekend’s really performed well this weekend, with Push having the biggest decline in the top 10, falling only 32% to gross another $6.9M. I expected Push to see a drop of 60% and not even make the top 10. With the Oscars next Sunday, Slumdog Millionaire continued to soar, dropping less than 1% and pulling in another $7.1M. If it does win the Best Picture Oscar (I’m sure it will), Slumdog may find its way to an overall gross of $120M by the end of its run. Capitalizing on Valentine’s Day, He’s Just Not That Into You saw a 29% decline and added another $19.6M to its total, right in line with my $20M prediction. To see how the rest of my predictions fared, check out the chart below.