U.S Box Office Report - 30th Mar - 1st April 2007

1.Blades of Glory - $33M - $33M
2.Meet the Robinsons - $25.1M - $25.1M
3.300 - $11.2M - $180M
4.TMNT - $9.16M - $38.4M
5.Wild Hogs - $8.39M - $135M
6.Shooter - $8M - $27.2M
7.Premonition - $5.1M - $39.3M
8.The Last Mimzy - $4M - $16.2M
9.The Hills Have Eyes II - $3.92M - $15.8M
10.Reign Over Me -$3.7M - $13.3M

Ice Skating comedy Blades of Glory opens in the top spot, as many predicted it would, with a strong March take of $33M. This marks Will Ferrell's second biggest ever opening after last summers Talladega Nights and it's not too shabby a take for a March comedy. Ferrell co-star, Jon Heder, receives his best opening weekend with Blades, beating out The Benchwarmers which opened to $19M last April. After the cult success of Napolean Dynamite Heder has struggled to break away from the character that proppelled him to stardom. Only the aforementioned Benchwarmers did any decent business, with last Novembers School for Scoundrels disappearing fast. Blades marks the return to straight comedy for Ferrell, after his critically semi-serious role in Stranger Than Fiction.

Disney's heavily-hyped CGI movie Meet The Robinsons doesn't emulate Pixar style business but it's still a pretty strong opening for a non-Pixar movie. Meet The Robinsons was actually in production before Pixar took over the running at Disney and received something of a re-tooling before release. Unlike last week's TMNT, Robinsons was aimed squarely at the kid market, who of late have settled for 'real life' kids movies with Bridge from Terabithia & The Last Mimzy. With Easter a week away Meet The Robinsons should hold firm and helped by the lack of direct competition, should see some decent business.

300, now in its fourth weekend of release drops just one place and still brings in a $10M+ take. The film is rapidly heading toward the $200M level could end up being one of the top ten box office hits of the year. The film has more than doubled it's production budget and still has a very lucrative DVD release waiting.

TMNT takes a pretty big hit this weekend, dropping off 62% of business from it's opening. While the movie has recouped its production budget this bigger than hoped for drop hints at the writing on the wall for the mutant turtles - after a strong opening the movie might struggle to see $60M. The movie is a success and while it might not signal another huge theatrical release you could expect to see at least one straight to DVD sequel. Meanwhile Wild Hogs crossed the $135M mark and is currently the second biggest film of 2007. A sequel of some sort could well be on the cards for that too - sadly not a straight to DVD one!

Shooter also fell this weekend but faired quite a bit better than TMNT did, though it's opening take was also much lower. The movie was quite costly and it might have faired better if it hadn't been released on such a packed weekend. This is the second film that Wahlberg has worked on with director Antoine Fuqua, the two had previously teamed up on remake The Italian Job. Sandra Bullock's Premonition has nearly doubled it's production budget in its third weekend but may end up finishing lower than The Lake House & Miss Congeniality 2.

Unlike Bridget to Terabithia, The Last Mimzy faced competition in the shape of TMNT & this week's Meet The Robinsons, consequently it's struggled to carve out a niche in the market and will probably be seeing its last weekend on the charts. The same goes for The Hills Have Eyes 2, which has just about recouped it's low production budget. The film opened on a busy weekend and failed to make much of a mark, especially when compared to Hills pt1 last year, which managed $15M within its first weekend. If this second movie repeats the DVD success of the first then there's still a slim chance that we'll see a third movie.

Rounding out the top ten is the Adam Sandler drama Reign Over Me. The film lost roughly half of its business from last weekend and will be forgotten by next Friday, if not sooner given that a number of releases are opening midweek. Reign Over Me will be written off as promotional tool to show that Sandler can actually act, while summer release 'I Now Pronounce You Larry & Chuck' will reassure fans that he's not heading for oscar stardom just yet.

One movie of note that opened on less than a 1000 screens is crime drama The Lookout. Directed by Scott Frank, the writer of Out of Sight, the film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a guy with memory problems who's coerced into robbing a bank in which he works as a cleaner. The film was very well reviewed and could become something of a cult hit similar to Levitt's previous movie Brick. A shame that a good movie hasn't found a wider audience while sub-standard fare sits in the top ten.