Robert Downey Jr’s second round suiting and booting it as Tony Stark slash Iron Man sped straight to the top of the box office this weekend.
Despite lukewarm reviews both sides of the pond, superhero sequel Iron Man 2 took $133.6m - the fifth highest take ever - during its opening weekend, easily trumping the first flick’s opening trawl of $98m. Is that an Iron Man 3 we spy on the horizon?
Iron Man 's haul crushed last week's champ Freddy Krueger in the process, his Nightmare On Elm Street reboot diverting to second place with a 72% drop in attendance and a piffling taking of just $9.1m.
Meanwhile, How To Train Your Dragon held firm in third with $6.7m, Date Night continued to woo in fourth with $5.3m, and The Back-Up Plan refused to die, defaulting to fifth with $4.3m.
The rest of the top ten? Brendan Fraser’s laugh-a-minute* Furry Vengeance slipped by 39% to sixth with $4m, while Clash Of The Titans proved immovable as an Olympian God's hair 'do in seventh place with $2.3m (a drop of 60%).
Finally, Death At A Funeral (above) went up a spot from ninth to eighth with $2.1m, The Losers slipped from sixth to ninth with a disappointing $1.8m (that’s a total of $21m in three weeks; bye-bye franchise), and new player Babies entered at tenth with a meagre $1.5m.
(Though, give it its due, Babies only opened on 534 screens, as opposed to Iron Man ’s 4,380.)
This Friday, Russell Crowe will pinch and punch things in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood . Can he pilfer the top spot from Iron Man 2 ? We bet it all depends on the Cannes buzz, the festival which Hood will be opening on Wednesday…
* For all the wrong reasons
What did you see this weekend?
