Iron ManFlies to Box-Office Victory
The new superhero king of the box office: Iron Man, which handily dominated the weekend box office with a $104.2 million take for its Thursday-Sunday premiere. The Jon Favreau-directed flick, starring Robert Downey Jr. as the titular superhero/industrialist Tony Stark, is the first movie produced by Marvel Studios (distributed by Paramount) and became the second biggest non-sequel opener of all time, just behind Spider-Man's $114.8 million debut in 2002. As for the rest of the top five: The Patrick Dempsey chick flick Made of Honor debuted in second place with $15.5 million; last weekend's number one, the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy Baby Mama, fell two spots to third place with $10.3 million ($32.3 million for two weeks); the Judd Apatow-produced comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall hung on to fourth place with $6.1 million ($44.8 million for three weeks); and last weekend's number-two flick, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay, dropped to fifth place with $6 million ($25.3 million for two weeks). Overall, despite Iron Man's impressive debut, box-office receipts were down versus last year. The top 12 movies of this weekend earned 15 percent less than the top 12 movies for the same weekend in 2007.