Seven-Day Summary: 'Iron Man 2' Scores Mighty First Week
After posting the sixth highest-grossing opening weekend ever, Iron Man 2 continued to draw huge audiences throughout the week. Last week's champ, A Nightmare on Elm Street saw a typically horrifying second week plunge, while How to Train Your Dragon, Date Night and The Back-Up Plan continued to hold well. Overall box office was up 14 percent from the first week in May last year, when X-Men Origins: Wolverine led with $102.6 million.

Iron Man 2 finished the week with $159.2 million, good for seventh place among the top-grossing opening weeks ever behind Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($159.9 million). An opening week looks at Friday-Thursday grosses only, but, in terms of all seven-day launches, Iron Man 2 ranks 12th, just behind Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ($159.3 million).

Spider-Man 3 remained the early May benchmark with $182.1 million in its first seven days, but Iron Man 2 actually had a bigger Tuesday-Thursday gross. Iron Man 2's Tuesday-Thursday was $21.7 million, compared to Spider-Man 3's $20.7 million. More importantly, Iron Man 2's first week saw a nearly 27 percent improvement over the first Iron Man's $126.6 million, and the sequel is already the third highest-grossing movie of 2010 and should pass second-ranked How to Train Your Dragon this weekend. Add in approximately $216 million overseas, and Iron Man 2 has thus far raked in an impressive $375.2 million worldwide.

Similar to most horror remakes, A Nightmare on Elm Street plummeted 69 percent for a second week take of $12.1 million. This was better than Friday the 13th's 79 percent drop, though, and Nightmare's $51.4 million two-week total makes it the highest grossing Freddy Krueger-only movie (though Freddy Vs. Jason made more, and most of the Nightmare movies sold more tickets).

How to Train Your Dragon experienced its largest fall yet, down 35 percent to $8.3 million. Assuming that a decent amount of this was due to losing its IMAX screens to Iron Man 2, Dragon should be in for a much better hold this coming week before handing over its 3D screens to Shrek Forever After next Friday. Dragon's seven-week total of $202.6 million makes it the second-highest grossing non-Shrek movie from Dreamworks Animation, behind Kung Fu Panda ($215.4 million).

Date Night had the smallest decline out of any nationwide release this week, down 25 percent to $7.1 million. With a five-week total of $82.7 million, Date Night is poised to pass Mean Girls this weekend to become star Tina Fey's highest-grossing movie. The Back-Up Plan also had a slight decline, off 28 percent to $6.7 million for a three-week total of $31.7 million.

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Last Week

Seven-Day Summary: 'Nightmare' Handily Haunts the Week



Related Charts

• Weekly Box Office, May 7-13


• Daily Grosses


• All Time Opening Weeks

• All Time 7-Day Openings