Pixar's Cars topped the weekend box office for the second straight week, taking in an estimated $31.1 million, but the computer-generated feature's total declined 48%. That would be good for an action film, but the drop was considerably more than Pixar's previous two features; The Incredibles only fell 29%, while Finding Nemo just dipped 34%. It appears that Cars, which has earned about $114. 5 million so far, won't end up very far north of $200 million.
Meanwhile another 'racing cars' film, Universal's The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which focuses on the sort of 'drift racing' celebrated in the Initial D anime, earned an estimated $24 million in spite of stiff competition for its young male target demographic from the heavily marketed Nacho Libre, which stars Jack Black and which drew a predominantly male, under 25 audience. While the third Fast and Furious film opened much weaker than its predecessors, it did exert a strong appeal to a young multicultural audience, drawing a crowd that was 58% male, 60% under 25 and 71% non-white.
Some industry analysts see the failure of Cars to duplicate the performances of previous Pixar releases as proof that audiences are tiring of computer-animated features. The disastrous opening of Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties does indicate that audiences are sick of Jim Davis' fat, lasagna-eating cat. In its opening weekend the new Garfield film only earned $7.2 million and could only manage a paltry $2,443 per theater average. Another CGI feature, Over the Hedge, remained in the top ten (just barely), but it has earned a respectable (though hardly spectacular) $138.7 million. There has been an increase in the number of CGI releases and they are not all doing as well as they did in previous years, but the problem may well be the films themselves and not the format.
Meanwhile X-Men: The Last Stand ran its total to $215.5 million, making it the highest grossing film in the series (and also in 2006 at least so far). The debut of Superman Returns on June 28th should shake up this list considerably and it should be interesting to see if X-Men: The Last Stand will remain in the top ten after the Man of Steel returns to the big screen.
