As expected, Martin Scorsese's new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island, bested its box office competition this weekend, drawing an estimated $40.2 million. This represents a best-ever debut for both Scorsese and DiCaprio, and is a fantastic debut for an R-rated genre flick.
Last week's big opener, Valentine's Day, no longer boosted by the natural publicity its namesake holiday generated, plummeted from the top spot. It dropped 69%, coming in at $17.1 million for a cumulative total of $87.4 million so far.
In third place was James Cameron's Avatar, with $16.1 million. It's 31.8% drop was it's biggest week-over-week to date. With a whopping $687 million in domestic grosses to date, Avatar is undoubtedly reaching the end of its salad days, as it'll lose most of its 3-D screens to Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in the coming weeks.
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief had its strong debut weekend cut in half, bringing in $15.3 million for $58.7 million so far. With another $68 million in international grosses, it should have no problem earning back its $95 million production budget. It's no Harry Potter, but a strong performance on DVD/Blu-ray could help to make other books in the series a reality.
Finally, rounding out the top five is last week's second place opener, and another film that suffered a massive drop week-over-week, The Wolfman. The action/horror flick dropped 69% to $9.8 million in its second weekend. With an estimated $50 million domestically, and an anemic $46 million internationally (this type of picture usually does much better overseas), it will likely lose money for Universal Studios.