Judd Apatow’s Funny People, which stars Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen, topped the box office in what turned out to be the worst weekend of the summer so far.  The total take of the top ten films was down 25% from the same frame in 2008 when The Dark Knight held serve for the third straight weekend and off 33% from 2007 when The Bourne Ultimatum bowed with $69.3 million.  After building up a substantial lead over 2008 in May and June, the 2009 summer season has now slipped behind last year’s.  Whether summer 2009 manages to get its mojo back and overtake 2008 will probably depend on the performance of Paramount’s G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra, which opens this coming weekend.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): July 31 - August 1, 2009

Funny People, which is a “dramedy” rather than a straight comedy, drew an audience that was 53% male and 52% over 25.  Ticket sales declined from Friday to Saturday, which is never a good sign, and audiences gave the film a "B-" CinemaScore, which doesn’t bode well for the future of the high-priced Funny People, which cost $75 million to produce (more than twice as much as this summer’s top comedy, The Hangover).

The other new entries fared even worse.  Fox’s Aliens in the Attic, which debuted at #5 with a pitiful per theater average of $2,511, gives every sign that it will be the Space Chimps of 2009, while the sadistic horror film The Collector didn’t even make the top ten in its debut weekend.

Buoyed by IMAX showings, which represented 18% of its total, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince declined just 40%.  The new Potter film earned an estimated $17.7 million, which brought its total to $255.5 million.  Sometime this week it will pass The Hangover and become the #3 film of 2009 so far, but its domestic performance pales beside its overseas take, which has reached $492.3 million giving it a worldwide total of $747.8 million after only three weeks. 

Last week’s winner G-Force managed a respectable 46% decline, while the Katharine Heigl/Gerard Butler comedy, The Ugly Truth, registered a sizable 53% drop, but still managed to earn an estimated $13 million and finish in fourth place.  The Ugly Truth may reach the $85 million mark, but it won’t come close to Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal, which has earned over $148 million and remained in the top ten for the seventh straight week, or the summer’s top comedy, The Hangover, which has remained in the top ten for 9 weekends and earned over $255 million.

The year’s top-grossing film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen added $4.6 million to its mammoth total (now $388 million), but barely managed to remain in the top ten in its sixth weekend.

It is now clear that Fox Searchlight’s 500 Days of Summer, which is still at only 266 theaters, will be the indie hit of the summer, though it’s not clear yet what the true potential of this film is.