No surprises this weekend at the US box office, with the inspired daftness of Will Ferrell and Jon Heder having lost none of its appeal.** Blades Of Glory** took gold upon its debut with $33 million of ticket stubs in its pile, shutting out its main competitor in Disney’s Meet The Robinsons, whose $25.1 million take was enough to land them second spot. The ice skating comedy didn’t open with the same gusto as Ferrell’s last movie Talladega Nights, but can enjoy the smug satisfaction of being a better, funnier film, and will doubtless have stronger legs than his NASCAR comedy (see what we did there?).
In third place, still going strong despite a 44% drop-off in attendance this week was 300, which now looks very much like breaking the $200 million mark sometime soon. It’s certainly proving to have more staying power than TMNT, who suffered a 62% fall in sales which sent it from top spot last weekend to fourth place this time out. Rounding the top 5 was Wild Hogs, which has managed to take $135.4 million in its five weeks of release to date.
In the bottom half of the chart, the film that we’re told by certain members of the Empire office is the closest in spirit to Commando that anyone’s come in a long time – we refer of course to Antoine Fuqua’s Shooter – held on to sixth place after two weeks in theatres. In a strange twist of fate people seemed more interested in seeing the limp paranormal thriller Premonition than the good paranormal family film with a bad title The Last Mimzy, which held onto seventh and eight place respectively. Ninth went to surprisingly not bad horror remake sequel The Hills Have Eyes 2 (2007), and Reign Over Me just managed to hang on in there on the last rung.