Weekend Estimates: WALL-E Wins, Wanted Wows as Well

June 29, 2008

Moviegoers showed themselves to be a little more sophisticated than the pundits predicted over the weekend by crowning WALL-E box office champion with a very healthy $62.5 million opening weekend, according to Disney's Sunday estimate. That's a huge start for a supposedley hard-to-sell movie -- on par with the debut of Monsters, Inc. -- and likely to end up the third or fourth best opening in Pixar's history (see complete list of Pixar movies). But that might not even be the biggest story of the weekend.

The biggest surprise was the opening of Wanted, which rode excellent reviews to a stellar $51.1 million estimated opening. Given its smaller opening distribution (in 3,175 theaters, as opposed to 3,992 for WALL-E), Wanted actually topped the toon on a per theater basis, and looks set to be the surprise hit the Summer has been waiting for.

- Weekend Estimates

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, WALL-E, Wanted