Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 topped the weekend box office for the second week in a row as it earned an estimated $72.5 million and brought its year-to-date leading domestic total to $285 million.  Meanwhile Baz Luhrmann’s over-the-top take on The Great Gatsby surpassed expectations as it opened with a surprising $51.1 million, though in spite of considerable strength at the top of the charts, the total of the top 12 films was still down 6% from the same weekend last year when The Avengers remained on top during its remarkable run during May of 2012.
 
Overseas J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness debuted robustly, earning $31.7 million in seven major markets.  Paramount is facing a problem with its Star Trek films that other studios don’t have with summer tentpole films based on other properties—namely that the Star Trek TV series has never been a big hit overseas and foreign audiences have never shown that much interest in Star Trek films.  So far Iron Man 3 has earned 70% of its mammoth total overseas, and The Avengers earned nearly 60% of its $1.5 billion outside of North America.  But Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek film made just 33.2% ($128 mllion) of its worldwide take ($386 million) overseas.  So Paramount decided to open Star Trek Into Darkness in the countries where Abrams’ 2009 film did best, and so far the strategy appears to be working with debut totals in the U.K. up 50% from 2009 and those in Germany up 80%.  It will be very interesting to see how Abrams’ second Star Trek film fares outside of North America.  It appears it will do better, but with so much room for improvement, the question is how much better?

 
There are no such qualms about Iron Man 3, which once again earned more overseas this past week ($89.3 million) than it did here ($72.5 million).  Iron Man 3, which opened a week earlier in many markets outside the U.S., has now amassed an astounding $664.1 million in foreign box office earnings, which gives it a worldwide total of nearly $950 million.  The Marvel Studios’ juggernaut will easily crash through the $1 billion benchmark sometime during the coming week.
 
The surprise of the weekend was Baz Luhrman’s flashy 3-D adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  With the help of an all star cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan) and a strong promotional campaign, the jazzed-up period drama proved to be a big draw for women, who made up 59% of the opening weekend audience, and surprisingly the 1920s saga proved more popular than most literary adaptations with young people since a solid 31% of the crowd under 25.
 
Aside from the top two spots on the chart, which accounted for 81% of the revenue earned by the top 12 films, there wasn’t much to note this weekend.  Pain and Gain, 42, Oblivion, The Croods, and The Big Wedding all experienced small declines, but their totals were small to begin with, and so were their contributions to the past weekend’s total. 
 
The usually reliable Tyler Perry, suffered something of a setback with the lackluster debut of Tyler Perry Presents Peeples, a film, which in spite of bearing his name, was not actually directed by Perry, and which could only manage a poor $2346 per theater average.
 
Mention should be made of Mud, an indie-type production that stars Matthew McConaughey as a mysterious stranger/fugitive.  The modestly-produced drama has been given a slow rollout and continues to remain in the Top 10 in spite of the fact that it is only playing in 854 theaters nationwide.
 
Next week things really heat up as Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness will attempt to wrest the top spot from Iron Man 3.  Though IM3 may well lose its top spot, analysts will be watching closely to see if the Marvel Studios’ tentpole will have enough drawing power to stay relevant in the box office race until Memorial Day.