Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith remained on top of the weekend box office, dropping just 34.8% to earn an estimated $70.75 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend, in spite of strong competition from Dreamworks' computer-animated Madagascar (est. $61 million) and the Adam Sandler remake of The Longest Yard (est. $60 million).  Both Madagascar and The Longest Yard had weekend openings higher than any other film in 2005, but in spite of their efforts and despite Revenge of the Sith's mighty performance, the weekend box office still lagged behind last year when the top three films, Shrek 2, The Day After Tomorrow and Troy grossed over $200 million.

With an amazing 12-day total of $271.2 million, Revenge of the Sith appears to be on pace to make the exclusive $400 million dollar club.  But the next few weeks will determine how high Episode III will climb in the All-time Box Office derby.  Will hardcore Star Wars fans come back for repeat viewings in the theaters when they know the DVD is on tap for the holidays?  With a normal 3-day weekend coming up Revenge of the Sith's weekend draw will surely plummet significantly.  Right now the film is ahead of Shrek's 2's pace ($260.3 million at this point in its run), but animated comedies tend to have more 'legs' than sci-fi blockbusters, so Revenge will have a difficult task staying ahead of Shrek 2's pace in the coming weeks. 

Still the three top films from this weekend should be battling it out for supremacy next weekend with only Ron Howard's depression-era fight picture Cinderella Man and the adolescent-targeted thrasher epic Lords of Dogtown likely to threaten to chew off a piece of any of this weekend's top three film's target audience.