Top Shelf at the Box Office!

This week's Top Shelf pretty much writes itself. It should come as no surprise what the top film over the weekend is, but what might surprise is just how big of a friggin' hit it was.

1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon- $140M

Surprised, aren't you? A New Moon set over the rest of the competition this weekend, breaking the single day record previously set by The Dark Knight by bringing in an estimated $72M on day one. By comparison, Twilight's entire weekend still falls $3M short of that. Twilight went on to gross nearly $192M, based on strong repeat sales. So the sky's the limit as far as New Moon is concerned. The studio's exit polling indicates that roughly 80% of the film's audience was female, so if any of my fellow geeks are looking for a pick up spot, that might be the place to go for a few weeks.

2. The Blind Side- $34.5M

Considering New Moon's massive opening weekend, it might be easy to forget that another fairly acclaimed book adaptation had a debut this weekend. Sandra Bulock's The Blind Side set the opening weekend record for sports dramas. Bullock is having arguably the best year of her career, as this also marks a personal record for her, which had previously been set by The Proposal earlier this year.

3. 2012- $26.5M/$108M

Performing slightly worse than previous Emmerich disaster flick, The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 dropped a crushing 59%. Normally I'd be happy about that, but the damage has already been done. Expect more Emmerich films in the near future. Darn it.

4. Planet 51- $12.6M

As far as animated kiddie fare goes, Planet 51 failed to measure up to the high standards set by the genre already this year. One of it's biggest problems was the marketing, which didn't really seem to indicate much except a human lands on a planet of aliens. It wasn't particularly funny or good to look at. Plus a lot of those who might've seen it were probably busy debating Team Edward or Team Jacob to notice it.

5. A Christmas Carol- $12.2M/$79.8M

Ok, so maybe I was wrong. $12M is still a healthy amount this many weeks into it's run, but the gross as it stands right now pales in comparison to The Polar Express. Now I still think it will hold on to enough viewership each week to bust that $100M mark, but this has to be something of a disappointment.

6. Precious- $11M/$21.4M

Finally garnering a national release, Precious continues to be something of a juggernaut each week, pulling in the second highest per site average($17,000) of any film that doesn't feature vampires and werewolves. The strong word of mouth and continued box office success should only bolster Mo'nique's run at Best Supporting Actress.

7. The Men Who Stare at Goats- $2.77M/$27.6M

The cloud burst over this dud a couple weeks ago.

8. Couples Retreat- $1.95M/$105M

9. The Fourth Kind- $1.73M/$23.3M

10. Law Abiding Citizen- $1.61M/$70M


Also...

Werner Herzog & Nicolas Cage's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans got off to a strong start at only 27 sites, arresting an estimated $257,000.