Box Office, Sony Pictures | featured news

My sources say Sony Pictures’ superhero reboot The Amazing Spider-Man opened with $35M (though some rival studios put the number in the neighborhood of $32M tonight). It easily sets a new domestic record for a Tuesday opening – helped by its 3D premium pricing – and is ahead of the original 2D Transformers ($27.8M) that debuted on Tuesday July 3rd, 2007. ”That is one huge number,” a Sony exec gushed to me tonight. “Unbelievable start to what should be a very exciting 6 days.”

Sony’s Brad Pitt baseball drama Moneyball topped the Friday box office with an estimated $6.8 million, putting it on course to score the best opening ever for a baseball drama with a projected weekend take of $20 million and solidifying the film’s awards standing. Taylor Lautner's Abduction, meanwhile, landed at No. 4. Moneyball's Friday standing doesn't mean it will necessarily come in at No. 1 -- the weekend is proving to be one of the difficult to call in months.

Sony toon earns $8.1 million, 'The Informant' lands second -- With a smorgasbord of choices at the multiplex, including headliners by Jennifer Aniston, Matt Damon and Megan Fox; Friday moviegoers’ savored Sony’s 3-D toon "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," shelling out $8.1 million.

Sony Pictures grabbed bragging rights for this weekend when Friday's North American grosses made its derivative sci-fi Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans and moronic comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop Nos. 1 and 2 respectively at the box office.