Weekend Recap: “Iron Man 2” stays solid

“Iron Man 2” still leads the box office after this weekend, but the distance from the rest of the field became not nearly as vast. Universal’s “Robin Hood,” compared to my predictions at least, outdid itself just a bit and helped see Tony Stark and friends to almost a 60 percent cut in gross from last week.

1. Iron Man 2 – $52 M (weekend) … $211.2 M (gross)
2. Robin Hood – $36 M … $36 M
3. Letters to Juliet – $13.5 M … $13.5 M
4. Just Wright – $8.2 M … $8.2 M
5. How to Train Your Dragon – $5 M … $207.6 M
6. A Nightmare on Elm Street – $4.6 M … $56 M
7. Date Night – $3.8 M … $86.5 M
8. The Back-up Plan $2.8 M … $34.1 M
9. Furry Vengeance – $2.2 M … $15.1 M
10. Clash of the Titans – $1.2 M … $160.1 M

For the second week in a row I successfully predicted the top five, with all three new comers sliding in behind “Iron Man 2” and “How to Train Your Dragon” rounding it all out. I was a little too cautious of “Robin Hood” predicting around $10 million less and slight overestimated “Letters to Juliet” by guessing about $5 million more.

Overall, the box office was down 22.8 percent from last weekend’s early summer movie surge. It will look to rebound again with “Shrek Forever After,” considering the previous two “Shrek” sequels have made more than $100 million each in their first weekends.