Karate Kid Waxes Competition

Ralph Macchio was nowhere to be seen, but The Karate Kid is alive and kicking.  

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith's offspring, Jaden, toplined Sony's remake of the Karate Kid, with Jackie Chan taking on the role of Mr. Miyagi.  The Karate Kid took in a whopping $56 million over its opening weekend.  

To put that opening in perspective, Jaden's father is one of the highest grossing movie stars of all time (approximately $2.5 billion so far), and has only had two films with larger opening weekends (Hancock and I Am Legend).  Not bad for a 12 year old.

With a budget of only $40 million, The Karate Kid could prove to be one of the most profitable films of the summer.

Second place went to another 80's remake, this time the TV series the A-Team.  With an opening weekend take of $26 million, the movie got off to a relatively weak start when measured against comparable pictures opening in a similar time frame.  Measured against a $110 million budget, Fox will be relying heavily on foreign grosses to make the film profitable.

Shrek Forever After fell a modest 38% in its fourth weekend, falling to third place with $15.8 million.  With grosses of $210 million so far, the film is holding up well considering it had a weak (by Shrek standards) opening weekend.  It'll still fall well short of the second and third film in the series' grosses, but should pass Dreamworks' other big kids pic for the year, How to Train Your Dragon, in total grosses by the end of the week.

Fourth place went to Get Him to The Greek, which fell 42.5% to $10.1 million, bringing its cumulative gross to $36.5 million.  With a modest $40 million budget, the film will undoubtedly make it into the black, but doesn't appear to be the runaway success that other summer comedies like The Wedding Crashers and The Hangover have been.

Finally, 5th place went to Killers, starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl.  The film fell by close to half to $8.2 million in its second weekend.  With just over $30 million in grosses so far, the film will be relying heavily on foreign grosses and home video sales to offset the $75 million budget.