Weekend Box Office: 'The Proposal' Wins a Busy Weekend

It may have seemed like an "off" week by summer standards in terms of releases, but two debuts and two strong holdovers meant that four films grossed $20 million or more, which is rare for a non-holiday weekend. The top dog, surprisingly, turned out to be The Proposal, which rode a genial marketing campaign and a set of sneak previews to $34 million dollars -- Sandra Bullock's best opening weekend ever, by far. (Related question: did Bullock "open" this movie? I'm inclined to think not, though it's a perfect role for her.)

Year One is a bit tougher to read. Certainly with the Cera/Black/Ramis combination, it was expected to open bigger. Generally poor reviews didn't help; I haven't seen the film, so I'm a bit handicapped in the analysis. If I had to guess, I'd say that people saw it as a bit of a novelty item. Silliness can be hard to sell if it's not low-brow.

But the weekend's real story, I'd say, is once again The Hangover, which stuck around in second place after dropping less than 20% in its third weekend. It's hard to find a precise analogue for it at this point; Box Office Mojo stretches with "R-rated summer comedy breakout," which category it will dominate after it speeds ahead of Wedding Crashers in about two weeks. The movie did add nearly 200 new screens; still, when people talk about word-of-mouth giving a movie legs, this is what they're hoping for.

Meanwhile, Up is now pretty much running neck-in-neck with Finding Nemo for the title of highest-grossing Pixar release. It will be close.

The full top 10 after the jump.

1 - The Proposal (Disney) - $34.11 ($11,163) - $34.11
2 - The Hangover (Warner Bros.) - $26.86 ($7,575) - $152.92
3 - Up (Disney) - $21.34 ($5,568) - $224.11
4 - Year One (Sony) - $20.20 ($6,684) - $20.20
5 - The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (Sony) - $11.30 ($3,672) - $43.33
6 - Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (Fox) - $7.30 ($2,465) - $155.95
7 - Star Trek (Paramount) - $4.70 ($2,037) - $239.44
8 - Land of the Lost (Universal) - $3.98 ($1,350) - $43.67
9 - Imagine That (Paramount) - $3.10 ($1,030) - $11.35
10 - Terminator Salvation (Warner Bros.) - $3.07 ($1,599) - $119.51

Next weekend: the 500-pound gorilla that is Michael Bay's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Also: the goofy-looking tearjerker My Sister's Keeper.