Toy Story 3 took the box office crown for the second week in a row, dropping just 46.5% while earning an estimated $59 million and easily topping debut efforts from Adam Sandler and Tom Cruise.  So far the Pixar animated film has earned $226.6 million in just ten days.  Given the “legs” that Pixar films have shown at the box office, it appears likely that TS3 will top $400 million, which makes it the film to beat in 2010.  There is little doubt that the new Toy Story film will cruise past Finding Nemo’s $339.7 million to become Pixar’s highest grossing release of all time--though it’s worth noting that a good portion of that financial success is due to higher ticket prices--it is unlikely that TS3 will be able to surpass Finding Nemo’s $56 million domestic admissions.

Adam Sandler’s PG-13 comedy Grown-Ups, which benefited from a huge advertising campaign, did a little better than expected, earning an estimated $41 million, almost exactly the same amount that Sandler’s Big Daddy debuted with eleven years ago (though again it is worth remembering that Big Daddy sold twice as many tickets during its weekend bow).  Although Sandler’s films have skewed towards young males in the past, the $80 million Grown-Ups, which focuses on a group of men approaching middle age, attracted a crowd that was 53% female and 52% under 25.  Audiences gave the film a fairly low CinemaScore of “B,” which is not a great sign for the film’s word-of-mouth potential

The disappointment of the week award goes to Tom Cruise’s Knight and Day, which despite heavy flogging on TV, brought in just $20.6 million.  With Knight and Day earning a CinemaScore of “B+,” Fox is hoping that word-of-mouth will keep the $140 million secret agent film alive in the face of increasing competition at the multiplexes over the next few weeks.

Meanwhile The Karate Kid fell 49% in its third frame as it brought in an estimated $15.4 million.  The remake of the 1980s classic has now earned more than $135 million and consistently outperformed its 80s-based competitor The A-Team, which fell 58%, but still managed to hang on to fifth place, well ahead of the comedy Get Him to the Greek, which fell off by 51% in its fourth weekend, but still took in $3 million, bringing its total to $54.5 million.

Warner’s DC Comics-based Jonah Hex, which dropped 70% and fell all the way to number 10, is the summer’s stone cold certified bomb.  Hex is already being cited by industry types as an example of “how not to make to make a comic book movie.”

The cumulative gross of the top ten films was down a hefty 19% from 2009 when Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen debuted with $109.3 million, and 13% from 2008 when Wall-e bowed at #1 with $63.1 million. 

With The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and The Last Airbender debuting this week, Hollywood hopes to get back on track.  Tune in next Monday and find out how Tinseltown fared over the Independence Day holiday.