Sunday final:
Starting out on a record-breaking pace in May, the summer box office will finish with a strong closing kick in August, with Sony's space-alien-immigration-themed "District 9" outperforming expectations with a big $37 million opening weekend.
Produced by Peter Jackson, directed by South African Neill Blomkamp and featuring a cast of relatively obscure actors, the R-rated sci-fi film, independently produced and licensed to Sony for $25 million, overshot projections by about $10 million, garnering an opening audience that skewed 64% male.
"You had the Peter Jackson pedigree for the film, sure, but lets be real about it," noted Rory Bruer, president of distribution for Sony.
"You have a director who is unknown and a cast that is unknown and a title... 'District 9,' what does that mean? We knew we had a terrific movie, but if we had opened in the mid-$20 million range, we would have been pretty happy with that."
Paramount popcorn film "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," meanwhile, still found enough male moviegoers left over for a $22.5 million second weekend, rallying with a strong $9 million Saturday and declining only 59% from its opening, according to studio estimates.
The $175 million popcorn film now has taken in $99.4 million domestically, and Paramount is confident it will creep to $300 million worldwide and attain profitability.
"I think when you have a movie like 'District 9' that crosses our demo the way it does, you expect to take a back seat on Friday," said Paramount exec VP Don Harris.
Finishing third, Warner-New Line's women-targeted "The Time Traveler's Wife" will conclude its first three days with $19.2 million, in line with industry expectations for the romance-fantasy drama starring Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams.
Among other openings this weekend, Paramount Vantage's low-budget, R-rated comedy "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard" starring Jeremy Piven is projected to finish the weekend in sixth place with $5.4 million, roughly on par with studio expectations.
Opening in only 927 theaters, meanwhile, Disney's animated "Ponyo" from Academy Award winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki placed ninth, finishing with $3.5 million.
Summit Entertainment's teen-targeted "Bandslam" opened out of the top 10, taking in a disappointing $2.3 million for its first three days. The film was co-produced by Summit and Walden Media for $15 million.
Among box-office imcumbents, Sony comedy "Julie and Julia," directed by Nora Ephron and starring Meryl Streep, will conclude its second weekend with $12.4 million, down 41 percent from its opener and giving the $40 million film a two-week domestic take of $43.7 million.
In fifth place right behind "Julia," Disney's Jerry Bruckheimer family film "G-Force" declined only 29% week-to-week and is now at $99 million domestically.
Managing to cling onto 10th place in its third week of release, Universal's Judd Apatow dramedy "Funny People" added another $3 million and is now up to $47.9 million -- still a long way away from recouping even its $91.5 million production budget.
For its part, "G.I. Joe" was figured by most box-office watchers to be the last big hit of the summer season, which going into the weekend had generated about $3.6
