North American box office: nothing can stop ‘Alice’

Alice is still kicking box-office butt, and by the end of last weekend, it had surpassed $265 million in North America. At this point, this shouldn’t come as a surprise (though it’ll be interesting to see if it can hold the No. 1 spot with How to Train Your Dragon opening and stealing some of its 3D IMAX screens). What is sort of surprising is that Diary of a Wimpy Kid managed to carve out, as Box Office Mojo terms it, “the biggest start ever for a non-animated, non-fantasy children's book adaptation.” Maybe that’s splitting too fine a hair -- every film can have a record-breaking weekend if you narrow the definition of what genre it fits into enough -- but it is, perhaps, an indication that books do still hold sway with lots of people. Even books that aren’t about boy wizards and aren’t written by Nicholas Sparks.

Twenty mill for Bounty Hunter? Really? I hope this weekend’s drop is a mighty one...

Remember Me, the Robert Pattinson romance, dropped all the way to No. 10 in its second week, and earned only $3.3 million. I really would have thought that his presence alone assured a much stronger performance for the film. That’s interesting, too.

[numbers via Box Office Mojo]