Weekend Box Office - It's Good To Be Despicable

It was a great weekend for animated movies. One enjoyed a solid opening weekend that almost turned it into a one-weekend profit maker and another was launched to highest-grossing movie of the year to date.

Despicable Me is one of those rare computer animated features that came in on a budget of less than $100 million. Its $69 million price tag was almost covered by this weekend's number one spot winning $60 million take. Given the movie's massive marketing effort the actual cost to recover is probably over $80 million, but this one's sure to have executives at Universal plotting a sequel if not an entire franchise.

Meanwhile Toy Story 3 dropped to fourth place but not before edging out Alice In Wonderland as the top selling movie of the year. With $340 million in the bank domestically, at this rate the third and final part in the toy-rific adventure looks to settle out at around $400 million. If it can hold on to the title, it will be a nice book end with the first Toy Story which was the top grossing movie of the year back in 1995.

Predators debuted in third place with $25 million. While that's not bad for a rated R entry in a long suffering franchise, it's not a ringing endorsement that audiences are excited to see the universe's ugliest hunters back in theaters.

For the full weekend estimates, check out the chart below:

1. Despicable Me * $60,117,000  -  Total: $60,117,000 LW: N     WR: 1     THTRS: 3,476

2. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse $33,400,000  -  Total: $237,000,000 LW: 1     WR: 2     THTRS: 4,468

3. Predators * $25,300,000  -  Total: $25,300,000 LW: N     WR: 1     THTRS: 2,669

4. Toy Story 3 $22,000,000  -  Total: $340,200,000 LW: 3     WR: 4     THTRS: 3,753

5. The Last Airbender $17,150,000  -  Total: $100,227,000 LW: 2     WR: 2     THTRS: 3,203

6. Grown Ups $16,400,000  -  Total: $111,315,000 LW: 4     WR: 3     THTRS: 3,463

7. Knight & Day $7,850,000  -  Total: $61,939,000 LW: 5     WR: 3     THTRS: 2,628

8. The Karate Kid $5,700,000  -  Total: $164,600,000 LW: 6     WR: 5     THTRS: 2,458

9. The A-Team $1,800,000  -  Total: $73,971,000 LW: 7     WR: 5     THTRS: 1,236

10. Cyrus $1,375,000  -  Total: $3,521,000 LW: 11     WR: 4     THTRS: 200