News - Box Office Guru Wrapup: Iron Man Rocks, Speed Racer Stalls

There was no stopping the strength of Iron Man which dominated the multiplexes for a second straight frame grossing more than the two new releases combined. The race for second place was extremely close as the Warner Bros. family picture Speed Racer and Fox's comedy What Happens in Vegas delivered nearly identical numbers over the weekend. Regardless, the new product and the strong hold from the super hero giant helped the overall marketplace surge well ahead of year-ago levels. Paramount ruled the box office again with the first installment of its new super hero franchise Iron Man which grossed an estimated $50.5M dropping 49% from last week. Compared to the studio's $102.1M bow which included Thursday night showtimes the second weekend decline was still just 51% which amounted to a strong hold given the enormous amount of business that was generated in the first weekend. The cume has soared to $177.1M already making it the top-grossing film of 2008 by surpassing the $150.7M that Horton Hears A Who has collected over the last two months.

Iron Man is off to the best start ever for a non-webslinger comic book movie. The total beat out ten-day starts for 2003's X2: X-Men United ($147.7M) and 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand ($175.3M). The third mutant adventure even launched over the lucrative Memorial Day holiday weekend. X2 dropped by a similar 53% in its second session and its ten-day cume would amount to roughly $174M at today's ticket prices so Iron Man is closely following that Marvel film's admissions trajectory. The second X-Men flick, which had the same May 2 opening date five years ago, went on to gross $214.9M domestically, or around $250M at 2008 prices. The Robert Downey Jr. pic scored the largest sophomore weekend haul of any film since last May's Shrek the Third which banked $53M on its second frame. Positive word-of-mouth helped as fans are recommending the super hero film to others and helping to drive sales. Plus the two new releases ended up not providing too much competition. This Friday's release of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and the following week's debut of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will provide some formidable distractions very soon. But at its current pace, Iron Man should soar to $260-280M from North America alone and could break the $500M mark worldwide.