'Exorcism', 'Takers' Virtually Tied

The Last Exorcism and Takers, two new releases this weekend, battled it out in a very tight race where it looks like The Last Exorcism squeaked into first place, but the reality won't be known until sometime on Monday.

With an estimated $21.3 million, The Last Exorcism is looking like the first place film for the weekend, but with terrible word of mouth, it's quite possible the film suffered more of a Saturday to Sunday drop than the studio initially estimated.

Takers took in an estimated $21 million in its opening frame, and also suffers from terrible word of mouth, so it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out.

No matter which film takes the top spot, however, Lion's Gate's The Last Exorcism is the real success story here.  Even if the film drops by 70% in its second weekend (a very real possibility),| it's already a hugely profitable film thanks to its tiny $1.8 million production budget.  Even adding in the costs for prints & advertising, a $20 million+ opening will bring the film well into the black.

Third place went to The Expendables, which fell to third place in its third weekend after holding onto the top spot for two weeks in a row.  The film dropped 44% week-over-week, adding $9.5 million to its total for $82 million so far.

In fourth place, Eat Pray Love fell 42%, with Julia Roberts' latest film adding another $7 million to its total.  With $60.7 million so far, the film represents respectable, but not stellar, grosses for Sony Pictures.

Finally, fifth place went to another hold over.  The Other Guys added $6.6 million to its total in its fourth weekend, bringing its cumulative gross to $99.3 million.

Falling well outside the top 5 (and even the top ten), the re-release of Avatar, with eight additional minutes of footage, brought in an underwhelming $4 million.  Its not surprising Avatar didn't blow people away with a little extra footage, especially considering the film is already available on DVD and Blu-ray, but it is worth noting that this re-release was enough to bring Avatar's international grosses over the $2 billion mark (with over $2.75 Billion worldwide), the first film to ever break that barrier.