Disney’s partially-animated rodent saga G-Force took the top spot at the weekend box office with an estimated total of $32 million.  Last weeks winner, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince tumbled 61% to an estimated $30 million.  Sony’s new romantic comedy The Ugly Truth scored an impressive bow with an estimated $27 million, while the horror film Orphan debuted with a passable $12.8 million total, but the overall box office was down 18% from last year when The Dark Knight ruled the multiplexes for a second straight week and down 19% from 2007 when The Simpsons Movie opened at number one with $74 million.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): July 24-26, 2009

G-Force demonstrated the power of the family audience and the drawing power of 3-D.  Families made up 75% of the crowd at the guinea pig spy flick, with 55% of the crowd under 18.  Only 43% of the G-Force screens were 3-D, but thanks to higher ticket prices they accounted for 56% of the film’s domestic gross.

The new Potter film plummeted 61%, but the series has become increasingly front-loaded--the last Potter film dropped 58% in its sophomore session.  After 12 days the film has earned over $220 million, putting it 7% ahead of the previous Potter entry, and The Half-Blood Prince should get a boost when it opens in IMAX theaters for the first time on Wednesday.  Overseas Potter’s dominance continued.  The Half-Blood Prince has now earned a whopping $405.3 million internationally, giving it a worldwide total of $627.1 million. 

Older women gave the Katherine Heigl/Gerard Butler rom-com The Ugly Truth a stronger than expected debut.  62% of the audience was female and 64% was over 25. Women also made up the majority (55%) of the audience for Warner Brothers’ creepy horror film Orphan, which debuted about as well ($12.8 million) as other mid-list horror films such as The Eye ($12.5 million) and One Missed Call ($12.4 million).

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs suffered it first steep drop (53%), but still finished in fifth place.  With a cumulative of $171.2 million, it appears likely to end up in the $200 million realm. 

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen finally fell out of the top five, but it still added an estimated $8 million to its massive cumulative that reached $379.1 million, which makes it #10 on the all-time domestic box office list.  It should easily make $400 million, but to put it in perspective in terms of ticket price inflation, Transformers will likely end up selling about the same number of tickets as 1997’s Men in Black, which finished its run at the domestic box office with a cumulative of $250.7 million.

Fox Searchlight’s deconstructed-rom-com 500 Days of Summer and Summit Entertainment’s The Hurt Locker both continued to perform well in limited release.