Next up was the heavily promoted Robert Downey, Jr./Zach Galifianakis vehicle, “Due Date.” The R-rated road comedy earned an estimated $33.5 million for Warner Brothers. It’ll be interesting to see if the lackluster reviews are reflected in less than awesome word of mouth and theatrical legs for the film. Nikki Finke reports that it got a decent B- from Cinemascore, but I remain eternally somewhat skeptical of those surveys.

The #3 film was Tyler Perry’s theatrical adaptation of a very non-Tyler Perry play, “For Colored Girls.” The heavy-duty drama earned true to Mr. Perry’s form with his traditional audience base, and generated an estimate of $20.5 million for Lionsgate. Say what you will about Mr. Perry, an adaptation of an acclaimed poetry-based play earning that kind of cash requires someone with his kind of populist sensibilities and appeal.

In the #4 spot, the age-spanning action-comedy, “RED,” continues to maintain its hold on the box office with an estimate of over $8.85 million for Summit. Last week’s Halloween #1, “Saw 3D,” had the expected big second weekend drop, plus a bit extra. It lost 63.6% for a Week 2 estimate of $8.2 million. “Paranormal Activity 2” is also dropping, but less dramatically (55.8%). It earned an estimated $7.29 million for Paramount in its third week.

Among limited releases, the four theaters showing Danny Boyle’s much discussed James Franco near-one-man-show, “127 Hours,” showed that audiences were willing to pay an arm, if not a leg, to see the fact-based ordeal film and things look promising for a wider release. It endured a spectacular per-screen average of $66,500 for a total of $266,000. Less stratospheric, but still healthy, was the 46 theater debut of the fact-based political ordeal drama, “Fair Game,” featuring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts as Bush-era National Security Council analyst Joe Wilson and his wife, spy Valerie Plame, who was very illegally outed by members of the Bush Administration. (Their defense: it was an accident. Woops.) It earned a per-screen average north of $15,000 and a total of $700,000.

Also, as Anthony d’Allesandro reminds us, Sony must be young at heart as well as they seem to having a consistently strong summer. Personally, I’d like to think there’s a bit of Louis B. Mayer mojo still lingering at the company’s Culver City grounds, which belonged to MGM until the mid-eighties. It is important to remember that Ferrell is, however, not a huge draw internationally, probably because a lot of his humor is verbal and plays off quirks of North American culture that might be obscure elsewhere. I mean, what is a Singaporean or Austrian to make of “Stay classy, San Diego!”?

#2 was, of course, “Inception,” which finally left the top spot in week 4 and dropped a modest 32.3% in its fifth weekend. The science fiction caper earned a tidy $18.6 million, which gets it to over $227.7 million so far, or thereabouts and, I’d say, well on its way to the $300 million mark. My skepticism that “Step Up 3D” could exceed earnings over the prior two films in the series was well earned. However, it did sufficiently well for Summit and Disney, hitting the better side of studio projections, Allesandro says, with an estimated $15.5 million. Apparently, given the mixed critical consensus cited, which is practically a rave for this kind of a tween-skiewing film, it doesn’t suck nearly as much as it could have, and that probably helps. Indeed, many of the critics are citing the dance numbers strongly enough to attract my curiosity. (I’m a sucker for a good dance number — emphasis on “good.”)

Moving down the charts,  Sony’s “Salt” continued to hold decently at an estimate of $11.1 million. Last weekend’s #2 picture, Paramount/Dreamworks’ “Dinner for Schmucks,” had a rather large drop of over 55% percent in it’s second weekend, dropping three places to the #5 spot. In a funny way, while few are arguing it’s particularly great, this film really seems to be dividing people over the question of whether it’s funny or unfunny, mean or nice. (David Medsker came down on the negative side, I came down on the positive — and I’m usually the tough-guy around here.)

Still, things are looking fairly rosy for Steve Carrel as he seamlessly transitions from television to movie star. His other hit comedy, albeit one only featuring his heavily accented voice, “Despicable Me,” is now at over $209 million and was very inexpensive by CG animation standards with only a $69 million budget. That must be music to the ears of the folks over at Universal, who really needed a hit.

As for limited releases, there’s actually too much interesting stuff happening for me to go into. However, as one might have guessed, Joel Schumacher’s “12” did the worst business of anything. In the critic-driven world of the arthouse, Mr. Schumacher has the cards seriously stacked against and this one was getting some of the worst reviews of his career, which is saying something. As always, you can read a lot more about it and many vastly better received movies over at Indiewire. Also, I had to look hard to find out how “Middle Men” did. Suffice it to say that, while I had mixed feelings about the movie, I think it deserved better and the folks at Paramount have been awfully nice to us on this film, which shouldn’t make a difference in how I root, but I’m human and it kind of does. At least, it beat the crap out of “12.”

To a lesser extent, the second week of the widely hated “Sex and the City 2” is also a contender for third place according to DiOrio — in his video, he doesn’t mention it in writing — but the Numbers see things quite a bit differently. I’d personally expect a bigger than average drop-off from it’s unimpressive debut simply because I get the feeling that hardly anyone liked it much, perhaps not even the franchise’s biggest fans.

Now, I’m writing this quite late at night (or early) and I’m not really in the mood to go into one my usual detail explications of all four new major releases, but we do have quite an assortment which I guess will fragment the market a bit. Suffice it to say Uncle Carl expects them all to come in the teens, mostly the mid to lower with the Numbers being generally more optimistic for all newcomers.

Inexplicably tracking best of the bunch is the PG-13 “Killers” from Lionsgate starring my least favorite actor — ever in the history of the universe, I think — Ashton Kutcher,  but also starring Kathryn Heigl, who’s just fine with me.  It’s being kept from critics, rarely a sign of massive success, especially for an action comedy-thriller-romance with theoretical cross gender and age appeal. This isn’t some trashy torture porn flick or fart-infused teen comedy. On the other hand, it’s got Kutcher.

Next up in terms of fiscal expectation I gather is, Lord help us all, the CGI-assisted talking dog movie “Marmaduke” — yes, that Marmaduke, the dog from the unfunny comic strip — which I suppose is supposed to ride the crest of family appeal to a decent showing for Fox. This is a movie that might appeal to small children, but I have to wonder if it’ll have any allure whatsoever to a single human over seven. I’m skeptical of the hopes for this one, though the forbearance of parents should never be underestimated.  It’s PG-rated, by the way, which means its either full of annoying scatological humor or the G-rating is entirely a thing of the past. In any case, it’s reviews are most certainly in the toilet. I don’t think they’ll harm it — I think the very idea of a “Marmaduke” movie will, however.

Faring far better critically are the films expected to, naturally, do least well of the bunch. “Get Him to the Greek” is very much on my mind as I’ve just finished a way long interview piece about it below this post. I think that I and our reviewer on this one, David Medsker, mostly agree, though I was less disappointed by its admittedly counter-intuitive final act. It’s a flawed but winning and, at times, utterly brilliant comedy from director Nicholas Stoller and the Apatow specialists in R-rated comedy.

It reteams Russell Brand and Jonah Hill from Stoller’s outstanding “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” — though Hill is playing a different character and the marketing is not playing up it’s spin-off status too obsessively. It’s doing quite well with critics, who are probably as starved for a decent comedy as everyone else. Some are even comparing it to last year’s super-sleeper, “The Hangover.” Universal most surely could use that kind of a hit, but it feels to me like less of a home-run and more of a decent single or a double that will probably do quite well over the years on home video.

Finally, since “Splice” from Warner Brothers and Joel Silver looks like a reasonably intelligent science-fiction monster horror flick low on gore but reasonably heavy in other kinds of thrills and chills, and a fairly obvious spin on the “Frankenstein” myth, it’s expected to do the least well. The original buzz was strong but now it seems to be getting mostly decent, but pretty far from ecstatic, reviews. In any case, since today’s horror fans expect a movie to induce PTSD, whatever success it has will have to be from sci-fi fans and old fogeys who actually enjoy watching the original “Frankenstein” movies. It would be fun to be surprised for a change. Maybe it’s R-rating, largely for language and sexuality, will fool them.

In other news…Oh, for a universe where someone not named Frank Miller made “The Spirit” and cast Brendan Fraser in the part he was born to play as Will Eisner’s affable-but-tough Denny Colt.  In that universe the accomplished actor wouldn’t have to take parts in apparently horrid comedies like Summit Entertainment’s “Furry Vengeance,” which climbed all the way up form 0% on Rotten Tomatoes earlier to a rocking 02% here on Sunday nigh because of a positive review from voice-in-the-wilderness Chris Hewitt. Still, the other 48 RT critics apparently spoke for the majority of filmgoers. The comedy earned a fairly pitiful estimated $6.5 million on its opening weekend to hit the #5 spot, despite plenty of publicity and screens for a wide release family film.

In the world of limited releases, the top per-screen earner was the extremely well-reviewed comedy-drama from critical favorite Nicole Holofcener and star Catherine Keener, “Please Give,” which earned a rocking estimated $25,600 or so for Sony Classics on five art-house screens over the weekend. Among other indie films doing notable business was the offbeat comic documentary, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” which earned an estimated $182,000 on 20 screens. “Harry Brown” starring Michael Caine also debuted strongly, earning an estimate $180,000 on 19 screens for Samuel Goldwyn, who is doing very well for a mogul whose been dead since 1974.