Disney's Chicken Little won the weekend with a $40.1 million opening, big compared to recent opening weekends and ahead of Disney's modest expectations, but small relative to CGI features by Pixar, its former ally and current rival.  The Incredibles, which opened on the analogous weekend last year, started with a $70 million weekend.  The weekend was down 10% from last year's over-all, continuing a negative trend in moviegoing this year.

About $2.1 million of the opening was from 79 3-D theaters (see 'Disney Preps 3-D Roll-out for Chicken Little').    

Jarhead's $28.8 million was also of interest to pop culture retailers--it was the highest R-rated opening for a movie based on a non-graphic novel book source.  Translation--Sin City and Constantine are still the top R-rated openings of the year.