Top 10 Movies: MACHINES makes millions

By: Patrick Sauriol
Date: Monday, July 07, 2003

After an absence of 12 years, the TERMINATOR film franchise catapulted back to the top of the box office this past weekend as TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES claimed top spot. The Warner Bros.-released sequel earned an estimated $44 million bucks from Friday to Sunday, bringing the film's total domestic gross to about $77.5 M. While it's not as huge an opening as THE MATRIX RELOADED or X-MEN 2, T3 did break the opening gross of its predecessor (TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY made $52 M in its first 5 days of release) and also had the second-highest opening gross of any R-rated film (THE MATRIX RELOADED is still the first).

Reese Witherspoon's LEGALLY BLONDE 2 came in second spot with a nice take of $22.9 M, but the other new release, DreamWorks' animated SINBAD film, had a disappointing $6.8 M in ticket receipts. With Disney's TREASURE PLANET and now SINBAD failing to pack them in at the theaters while CGI flicks like FINDING NEMO earn a quarter of a billion dollars, we may be looking at the end of traditional cel animation features and the dominance of computer generated animation in movies.

28 DAYS LATER is still drawing them in and turning out to be a solid little summer hit for Fox Searchlight. FINDING NEMO is the highest-grossing Disney/Pixar film ever and still is going strong while THE MATRIX RELOADED has finally slipped off the top ten (total take so far: $272 M).


Next week: Disney's PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN and Fox's THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: old style adventure done the 21st century way!

Here's the list of last weekend's top grossing films, their weekend gross and the film's total gross to date:

1. TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES $44,045,000 $72,526,000
2. LEGALLY BLONDE 2: RED, WHITE AND BLONDE $22,900,000 $39,187,000
3. CHARLIE'S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE $14,200,000 $67,206,000
4. FINDING NEMO $11,000,000 $274,900,000
5. THE HULK $8,200,000 $117,000,000
6. SINBAD: LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SEAS $6,800,000 $10,000,000
7. 28 DAYS LATER $6,070,000 $20,686,000
8. THE ITALIAN JOB $4,275,000 $84,015,000
9. BRUCE ALMIGHTY $4,000,000 $228,700,000
10. 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS $2,400,000 $119,300,000


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