Unsurprisingly, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 took the box office crown over its opening weekend. The seventh film in the series grossed a whopping $125.1 million since opening on Thursday night. Previous films in the Harry Potter series have had total domestic grosses in the $300 million range (and typically close to or exceeding $1 billion worldwide). Deathly Hallows Part 1 is on an early track to match, or even exceed, those grosses as audience anticipation of the final chapter in the popular series opening next year builds.
Second place went to the box office king from the prior two weekends, Megamind. Megamind shares a lot of the same audience as Harry Potter, so it's not surprising that the film dropped 45% in its third weekend of release. With another $16 million added to its grosses, Megamind now has a cumulative total of $109 million in domestic grosses.
Last week's number two film, Unstoppable, dropped a reasonably soft 42% to $13.1 million in its second weekend for a third place finish. The Denzel Washington/Chris Pine film has ridden remarkably strong word of mouth to a total gross of $42 million so far.
Due Date dropped to fourth place, adding another $9 million to its total for just under $73 million in grosses to date. The road-trip comedy has performed well, but not on pace with director Todd Phillips previous comedies (e.g. The Hangover).
Finally, fifth place went to a newcomer, Liongsate Films' The Next Three Days. The Russell Crowe-starring action film grossed $6.7 million in its opening weekend. The film has received reasonably strong word-of-mouth, but an absolute thrashing critically. Given the low-key promotional campaign, this film feels more like it was dumped on the market than released.