Corona | Coming Attractions

After seven weeks of remaining in the number one spot, Avatar has finally been dethroned as the continent's top box office movie by a romantic drama. Sony's Dear John, the adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel, bested the blue-skinned behemoth by almost $10 million dollars.

Dear John opened to $32.4 million while Avatar took in $23.6m (bringing its total to $630.1m domestically). Back in 1998 it was New Line Cinema's Lost in Space that finally managed to topple Titanic from the number one spot. A decade on, all that the Lost in Space movie is remembered for is as a trivia question about Titanic's reign. Are we looking at the same for Dear John?

In third spot is Lionsgate's From Paris With Love. Made for an approximate cost of $50 million dollars, the John Travolva/Jonathan Rhys Meyers actioner only managed to make out with $8.1 million.

Last week's #2 is this week's #4, Edge of Darkness ($7m new, $29.1m total). That's alright but still, it's no comeback for Mel Gibson. Still, old Mel has more to stand tall about; at least he's not Harrison Ford who's got his latest, Extraordinary Measures, in nineteenth place only in its third week of release. It seems that Indiana Jones 5 can't happen soon enough for Ford.

Fox's Tooth Fairy falls from #4 to #5 ($6.5m new, $34.3m total), When in Rome topples three spots to sixth place ($5.5m new, $20.9m total) and The Book of Eli is down two spots to seventh place ($4.8m new, $82.1m total, nicely done). However, the week's biggest winner may be Fox Searchlight's Crazy Heart; the studio is capitalizing on Jeff Bridges' Oscar-nomination and Golden Globes win by increasing the movie's number of screens. That's paid off in a 58% in ticket sales this week over last ($3.6m new, $11.1m total).

Rounding out the final two spots is Legion (#9, $3.4m new, $34.6m total) and Sherlock Holmes (#10, $2.6m new, $201.5m total).

And very quickly: Disney's The Princess and the Frog finally cracked the $100 million dollar barrier ($101 million dollars domestic in 11 weeks of release) and, thankfully, Alvin and the Chipmunks is out of the top ten (it's in #14 with a total domestic gross of $212m).