Rarely do films control the top spot for more than two weeks in a row. Inception did it and is pretty much on a lot of people’s “classic” list. Well The Help has now done it. Kind of a surprise since the film wasn’t exactly highly marketed. Word of mouth is spreading obviously, it deserves all the praise and the fact so many people are seeing it I think is a good thing. We as an American audience should support films like this. To me the bigger surprise is the film that landed in the second place, a film that had very to almost no major advertising, The Debt almost made $10 million over the weekend which is rather impressive. Apollo 18 a film that was trying very carefully to not show too much in its trailers, guess it worked, it landed in third almost $9 million.

The rest of the box office was pretty average, Shark Night 3D eat up almost $9 million bucks. Rise of the Planet of the Apes continued to add to it’s total and is a clear hit and probably one of the more surprising one’s over the summer. Colombiana and Don’t be Afraid of the Dark also added some more cash to their totals but aren’t exactly lighting up the box office. Not much of a surprise but Fright Night and the Conan: The Barbarian remake were quickly bounced from the box office. Maybe Hollywood will slow the remakes down a bit from here on. Here is the list…

1. The Help $14.2 million

2. The Debt $9.7 million

3. Apollo 18 $8.7 million

4. Shark Night 3D $8.6 million

5. Rise of the Planet of the Apes $7.8 million

6. Colombiana $7.4 million

7. Our Idiot Brother $5.2 million

8. Don’t be Afraid of the Dark $4.9 million

9. Spy Kids 4 $4.6 million

10. The Smurfs $4 million