Corona | Coming Attractions

Christopher Nolan had a dream a decade ago about making a movie where his characters enter your mind while you're sleeping and steal your ideas. Now he's seeing the fruit born of that idea as Inception emerged at the top of the box office. $60.4 million dollars will bring a nice, warm feeling to the Warner Bros. team. They gambled on giving their Dark Knight director carte blanche as a reward for delivering the second-highest grossing movie of all-time, and it's paid off.

Leonardo DiCaprio's team will also be happy, too: that $60.4 million opening is the best yet for the star's career. Budgeted at approximately $160 million dollars, Inception will prove to be profitable before it ends its theatrical run. That means that on the home video side of the coin the movie will make a profit for the shield studio, and hopefully it will open the doors for more weightier sci-fi films to be made.

In second place arrives Despicable Me, bringing in another $32.7m for its owners at Universal and pushing the accumulated total up to $118m. Sequel. Gonna happen.

Third spot is held by The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a weak sauce fantasy-actioner that tries to be Pirates of the Caribbean but comes out tasting too vanilla. With $17.3m taken in over the weekend and another $5 mil grossed Wednesday and Thursday, it's got a long, long way to go to recoup its $150 million dollar budget.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. Look, let's just get this done with quick: it's up to $265 million dollars domestic. Are the Twi-moms and their daughters hitting Comic-Con this week? No 'cuz Rob, Taylor and Kristen won't be there. Awww...

Toy Story 3 is adding to its Pixar best showing with another $11.7m new (total gross is now $362.7m.) Amazingly, it still would need to make another $80 million before it became the highest-grossing animated movie of all-time, a claim still held onto by Shrek 2 with its $441m gross.

Grown Ups is still in sixth place ($10m new, $129.2m total), The Last Airbender sinks two spots to #7 ($7.4m new, $114.8m total), Predators sinks five spots to #8 ($6.8m new, $40m total), Knight & Day is #9 ($3.7m new, $69.2m total) and The Karate Kid is in (tenth place $3.7m new, $169.2m total.)

Lesson learned this week: halfway through the summer of '10, people are starting to go to the movie theater and the big, brainy science fiction movie didn't scare them away. There is hope for the future of mainstream Hollywood entertainment, hallelujah!