Seven-Day Summary: 'Rango,' 'Bureau' Lead Another Down Week
Rango had a solid if not altogether remarkable first week, and The Adjustment Bureau scored the best start for a Matt Damon headliner in years. On the other hand, Beastly mustered a moderate debut, Take Me Home Tonight flopped, and the rest of the field was expectedly quiet. As a result, overall box office was off 34 percent from last year, when Alice in Wonderland led with a whopping $146.6 million. That's the worst year-over-year decline so far in 2011, and it indicates that the industry may have at least a few more down weeks.

Rango opened to $45.6 million, which was way off from How to Train Your Dragon's $63.1 million start last March. Dragon's weekdays were leading in to the Easter holiday, though, and it also had a 3D boost, meaning this discrepancy wasn't quite as bad as it looks. However, Rango fared much worse when compared to Alice in Wonderland, which targeted a similar family audience, opened on the same weekend last year and also prominently featured Johnny Depp in its marketing. Alice tallied 20.8 percent of its opening week grosses from the Monday to Thursday period, while Rango managed a much lighter 16.5 percent.

The Adjustment Bureau finished in second place with a strong $27 million launch. That's a marked improvement over Damon's last four lead roles in Hereafter, Green Zone, Invictus and The Informant!, and generally positive reactions should make this an ongoing attraction for adult audiences.

Beastly barely took third place this week, edging out fourth place finisher Hall Pass by less than $45,000. The Alex Pettyfer-Vanessa Hudgens fantasy romance opened to $11.9 million, which was middle-of-the-road for upstart distributor CBS Films. Among comparable titles, it was a tad better than last March's Remember Me, though it was way behind Pettyfer's I Am Number Four.

Easing a light 34 percent, Hall Pass earned $11.85 million to bring its two-week total to $29.8 million. It held much better than The Farrelly Bros.'s The Heartbreak Kid and should be able to make a run at passing Fever Pitch ($42.1 million) to become the brothers' highest-grossing movie since Shallow Hal in 2001.

With Rango stealing away a chunk of its family audience, Gnomeo and Juliet fell 45 percent to $8.7 million. In just under a month, the animated movie has made $85.5 million and is still in the hunt to close north of $100 million.

Long-delayed 1980s-themed comedy Take Me Home Tonight opened all the way down in 11th place with a meager $4.6 million. That was good enough to top the entire run of Relativity Media's The Warrior's Way, though that's not really saying much. Between those two movies and Season of the Witch, the nascent distributor is now zero for three. It hopes to reverse its fortunes next weekend with Bradley Cooper-Robert De Niro thriller Limitless.

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Weekend Report: 'Rango' Moseys Into Top Spot



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Weekly Box Office, March 4-10

Daily Grosses

All-Time Domestic Grosses