Weekend Box-Office: July 6-8, 2012

Spidey’s box office? Pretty amazing!

Despite a mere five years between Tobey Maguire leaving the costume and Sony’s new wall-crawling reboot, True Believers had no problem swinging to theaters for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN!

The latest version of Marvel’s wise-cracking fan-fave superhero spun up $65 million over the weekend, with a $140 million total since its domestic opening on Tuesday, July 3rd. The high-haired new Peter Parker can plop that cash on the pile with the $200+ million that the relaunch has snatched from other markets around the world. That $140M puts it in the midst of the previous Spidey trilogy’s take over the same span of time — ahead of what the first SPIDER-MAN collected over six days, but behind SPIDER-MAN 2 and SPIDER-MAN 3 (not accounting for inflation).

While it may not exactly be the “untold story” that the studio and filmmaker Marc Webb had initially promised, audiences generally seemed happy with this incarnation of the Lizard-fighting web-slinger, handing it an ‘A-‘ CinemaScore. But when it comes to distinguished competition, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN has just a couple of weeks to ensnare more dough before another superhero enters theaters — because THE DARK KNIGHT RISES on July 20th.

Even with his foul mouth, TED is still loveable to crowds, embracing another $32 million and a whopping $120.2M 10-day total. Guess we should expect to see writer-director Seth MacFarlane working with more humans in the near future. TED is also becoming one of Mark Wahlberg’s biggest movies, currently behind just THE DEPARTED ($132.3M), PLANET OF THE APES ($180M) and THE PERFECT STORM ($182.6M). We’ll see if the movie has the same summer staying power of R-rated raunch-com THE HANGOVER, which ended up with $277M and remained in the Top 10 for nine weeks.

BRAVE stood stoic in third place with $20.1 million and a $174.5M total, edging toward the takes of Pixar’s own CARS 2 ($191.4M), the first TOY STORY ($191.7M), and RATATOUILLE ($206.4M). The redhead princess shot another arrow into the potential stardom of Taylor Kitsch, whose latest action-thriller SAVAGES came up short in fourth with $16.1 million (filmmaker Oliver Stone’s R-rated cartel movie was originally planned for a September release).

MAGIC MIKE seems to have gotten most of the shimmy out of its system, taking a 60% drop from last week for fifth place and $15.6 million in its second weekend, but the male-stripper story has still managed to grind out an impressive $72.7M total in 10 days. Star Channing Tatum is reportedly also considering ways to turn the tantalizing tale into a Broadway musical, so Mike better find some pockets to put all his potential upcoming funds.

Katy Perry may be a ubiquitous radio, video and TV presence, but “pop star” doesn’t necessarily translate to the box office as demonstrated by the performance of KATY PERRY: PART OF ME. The new concert/documentary was virtually ignored in 8th place with $7.1 million — and a lower per-screen average than MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE’S MOST WANTED in its fifth weekend. At least the movie only cost around $12M…

TYLER PERRY’S MADEA’S MOST WANTED has started to go into hiding with a 60% drop in its second weekend, but Wes Anderson’s MOONRISE KINGDOM has built itself a castle at the bottom of the chart — it lost only 5% of business since last week and has slowly stacked up $26.8M in seven weeks of limited release. Woody Allen’s TO ROME WITH LOVE also expanded onto 800 screens and popped onto the list as PEOPLE LIKE US, PROMETHEUS, ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER and SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN make their departure.

Next week’s only major release is ICE AGE: CONTINENTAL DRIFT, so we’ll see if audiences have had enough family-friendly CG activity this summer or if the wandering prehistoric beasts can hit the same figures as the last three in the series.