Forbidden Kingdom: $27,025,134 ($70 million budget)
Forgetting Sarah Marshall: $24,062,895 ($30 million budget)
Prom Night: $10,251,048 ($20 million budget, second week)

Every week we take a look at how the top three movies did at the box office, from Friday to Thursday. This week clearly started with the domination of ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ in the weekend. ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ however, slowly took over and is definitely showing more legs. It’s expected to have another good weekend, since its only competition is ‘Baby Mama,’ mainly targeted at a younger audience.

‘88 Minutes’ with Al Pacino didn’t manage to make the third spot, bringing in just $9 million behind ‘Prom Night.’ The horror had another good week, making half of what it did the week before, where maybe a bigger drop was expected. This week it still made over 50% of its budget.

‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ had the best budget/box office ratio, bringing in 80% of its budget. ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ managed to only take a little under 40%, but it’s less dependent on the US market, releasing in Hong Kong this week.

The game isn’t over yet, but ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ already scored one point this Friday, doing an estimated $7.6 million at 3,151 theaters — that’s $2,400 per screen.

‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ wasn’t far behind, with $5.9 million at 2,798 screens. But if we do the math, we see it’s already doing less per screen. $2100 to be exact.

It still did a lot better than Al Pacino though. His ‘88 Minutes’ only did $2.3 million for the day. But nobody wasn’t expecting that one to do big numbers anyway. Too bad for its $30 million budget.

[update]
The fight has been fought, it’s over. ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ just won the weekend with an estimated $20.9 million. ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ still managed to make a respectable $17.3 million. Both exceeded most expectations.

Last week’s number one, ‘Prom Night,’ came in third with $9.1 million, making for a total of $32.6 million in the first 10 days.