Singer/actress Beyonce Knowles scored a sizzling debut with her Fatal Attraction-like feature Obsessed, which performed well above expectations, earning an estimated $28.5 million.  The audience that rooted for Beyonce to save her marriage from the machinations of psycho stalker Ali Larter was 58% female and 51% over 25.  Last week’s box office winner, 17 Again, slipped 50% to $11.6 million in its second weekend, but still had enough to nose out Fighting, which earned an estimated $11.4 million.

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

Paramount’s The Soloist starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr. brought in just $9.7 million in its opening weekend, while Disney’s Earth, a reworking of the BBC series Planet Earth, earned an estimated $8.5 million, not bad for a documentary, which opened on Wednesday (Earth Day) and has brought in over $14 million in its first five days.

Overall the box office for the final weekend before the start of the summer movie season was up 24% over the same frame last year, capping off a strong start to 2009.  Although the number of new films released so far this year is down 9%, the box office take is up 18% and the number of admissions is up by 16%.  Eighteen films have posted openings north of $20 million in ’09, versus just eleven films last year, and six films released in 2009 have passed the $100 million mark compared with just one 2008 film at this time last year.

Paramount’s Monsters vs. Aliens, which finished in sixth place in its fifth weekend, suffered the smallest decline among widely released films, falling just 35.6%, while earning $8.5 million and bringing its cumulative to $174.8 million, which makes it 2009’s top earner to date, and a likely candidate to surpass $200 million.

Another surprisingly strong performer this year, Universal’s Fast and Furious, the fourth film in the popular street racing franchise, earned another $6 million, bringing its total to $145 million, which makes it the top-earning film in the franchise, though, when adjusted for inflation it is still well behind the first two films in the series, which earned $186 million and $154 million respectively in inflation-adjusted dollars.