Wiki News/'Sonic X: Return to Soleanna' captures second weekend at the top at $61m

Six weeks in, the summer movie season has its first hit.

20th Century Fox animated movie, "Sonic X: Return to Soleanna" is at the top of the box office again pulling $77 million, falling 61 percent from it's last weekend, it is up to $274 million domestically. Worldwide it fast track up to $684 million, close to become the 2nd biggest worldwide movie of 2010 after Alice in Wonderland. This movie is expected to reach over $320 million for the next four to five months, and up to $900 million worldwide. Next weekend, it will be Sonic's last stand when "Toy Story 3" will dominate it. Exept for "Jonah Hex", starring Megan Fox, it might not do as good as it can.

Sony remake "The Karate Kid" surpassed the high end of its pre-release tracking by over $20 million this weekend, grossing $56 million, according to studio estimates.

Sony distribution chief Rory Bruer, who was a Los Angeles-based regional sales rep for Columbia Pictures when the first "Kid" was released in 1984, called the debut "crazy cool," noting that he has seen few films score as well in pre-release testing.

"On our first test screening, the movie scored 97 percent on the top two boxes," he said. "You just don't see those kinds of scores."

Amid an overall box office that was up 10 percent over the same weekend last year, Fox's movie remake of 1980s NBC action series "The A-Team" didn't meet its tracking estimates, which were also in the $30 million-plus range, grossing an estimated $26 million.

But all is not lost for the Joe Carnahan-directed, PG-13-rated action film, which stars Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper, with the $95 million picture scoring an "A" grade among viewers 25 and under from movie exit-poller CinemaScore.

With kids vacating high school and college campuses in the coming few weeks, and "A-Team" garnering an audience of 61 percent under the age of 25, Fox officials are hoping for solid playability in the coming weeks.

"I think we have a real opportunity coming up with 'Toy Story 3' being the only film opening wide next weekend," said Fox executive VP of distribution Chris Aronson.

Meanwhile, finally falling out of the top spot in its fourth weekend of release, DreamWorks Animation 3D sequel "Shrek Forever After" finished in third place with $15.8 million, dropping only 37 percent week to week. It has now grossed $210.1 million in the U.S. and Canada.

Finishing in fifth place, and fairing decently in week two, Universal comedy "Get Him to the Greek" garnered $10.1 million, bringing its domestic total to $36.5 million. The movie "Greek" was spawned from, 2008's "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," grossed $35.1 million after two weeks, so the performances are pretty comparable, even though "Greek" cost slightly more to produce at around $40 million.

In sixth place, Lionsgate Asthon Kutcher/Katherine Heigl rom-com "Killers" grossed $8.2 million, upping its domestic total to $30.6 million on a 48 percent week-to-week drop. Lionsgate spent a studio-record $75 million to produce the movie, an amount company officials say was offset by tax breaks and foreign pre-sales.

In seventh place, Disney's "Prince of Persia" dropped 52 percent in its third week to $6.6 million. The $200 million Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film has grossed $72.3 million in the U.S. and Canada.

Meanwhile, in tenth place in its sixth weekend, Marvel's Paramount-distributed "Iron Man 2" grossed $4.6 million, finishing just shy of the $300 mark overall with $299.3 million.

The big story for the weekend was "Karate Kid," however, a $40 million film, shot on location in China by relatively unknown director Harald Zwart, that rebooted a franchise that grossed more $260 million at the global box office across four movies from 1984-1994.