'The Avengers' Dark Reign Is Over; Long Live the 'Men In Black'

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Welcome back to the Box Office Report where we'd take a Josh Brolin and Tommy Lee Jones buddy flick, hold the Smith, any day. 

1. Men In Black III (Sony): $55 million in 4,248 theaters

Never underestimate one of the most bankable men in Hollywood. Will Smith's return to the box office, in familiar black dress, put up a nice $55 weekend take, and it's tracking to take more than $70 million over the holiday weekend. The movie likely suffered from audience's short attention spans. Sony was hoping for something closer to $80 or $90 million this weekend. Consider: Smith hasn't been on screen in four years, MiB 2 came out ten years ago, and the original five years before that. It's not hard to figure out why viewers may sleep a little on the thereequal. 

2. Marvel's The Avengers (Buena Vista): $37 million in 3,918 theaters [Week 4]

And The Avengers' box office free fall has finally started. It's first weekend off the top of the marquee only brought in a middling $37 million. Oh no! How will Disney ever financially survive this? Probably by rolling around in the rest of the $513 million the Avengers has brought in domestically. It's the fastest movie to reach $500 million, beating Avatar by more than a week. 

3. Battleship (Universal): $10.8 million in 3,702 theaters [Week 2]

Oof, remember last week when we said Battleship could put up respectable but not dominating numbers and hang around the top five? Please don't remember that. Our plans to see the movie fell apart this week, and so did everyone else's, apparently. Battleship's made enough overseas to cover it's mammoth $210 million budget, but it's still disappointing to see it perform so poorly domestically. Riggins forever.

4. The Dictator (Paramount): $9.6 million in 3,014 theaters [Week 2]

If you're looking for a quiet place to spend some time alone, we suggest going to your local theatre and buying a ticket for The Dictator. If you're not the only person in the theatre we'll eat our hat. 

5. Chernobyl Diaries (Warner Brothers): $8 million in 2,433 theaters

It's another found footage movie from the guy who did Paranormal Activity, except instead of a ghost haunting an American family it's Russian mutants attacking American tourists. If you want to watch a good horror movie this week, let us recommend the surprisingly superb Daniel Radcliffe vehicle Woman In Black, or Ti West's The Innkeepers. Both were just recently released on DVD, and nearly made us pee.  

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.