Shrek Slows, MacGruber Crashes

It was an unusual weekend at the box office, with Shrek Forever After, the fourth movie in the series, opening significantly lower than the prior two movies in the series.  Shrek 4 had a $70 million opening weekend, compared to a $121 million opening for the third movie in the series, and $108 million for the second movie.  The original Shrek opened to $42 million in 2001.  Shrek 4's weak opening was still good enough for first place, but it'll need some serious legs to even come close to the ultimate grosses of prior movies in the series.

Iron Man 2 fell 49% in its third weekend to $26.3 million, bringing its total domestic grosses to $251 million.  This was enough to keep pace over Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe.  Robin Hood fell 48% to $18.8 million for just under $67 million to date.   With a $200 million plus price tag, Robin Hood's distributor, Universal Studios, has to be disappointed.

Summit Entertainment's Letters to Juliet fell a modest 33%, bringing in $9 million for $27.3 million in grosses so far.  Finally, the top five was rounded out by another small picture, Just Wright, which brought in $4.3 million for a total of around $15 million in grosses so far.

This left the weekend's other big opener, Universal's MacGruber, floundering in sixth place with a total of $4 million in opening weekend grosses.  With a modest $10 million budget, MacGruber didn't represent much of a risk, but it's the latest in a long line of movie flops based around Saturday Night Live sketches.  Time will tell whether MacGruber can pull an 'Austin Powers', which didn't do well in its initial theatrical run, but ultimately did well enough on home video to warrant two sequels.