Box Office Special - The Man of Iron Goes Down, Finally

In this day and age, sitting atop the box office standings for more than one weekend is somewhat uncommon. Doing so in the midst of the highly contested summer season, even more so. "Iron Man" had a nice run, but it was only a matter of time, and this week the Marvel creation plummeted all the way to number two.

Taking its place, with a cool $56 million, was "Prince Caspian," the sequel to Disney's successful fantasy film, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe." Surprisingly, "Caspian," which does not prominently feature a wardrobe did slightly less business than its predecessor ($56 to $65).

Now, while "Iron Man" dropped to number two, we really shouldn't shed any tears. With $31.2 million in week three, "Iron Man" has now totaled over $220 million. Its third week performance was actually better than all but four 2008 films' openings ("Horton," "Cloverfield," "10,000 B.C.," and "Caspian" all made more). During the last weekend of February, Will Ferrell's hot-mess "Semi-Pro" took home the top spot. That film made $15 million, less than half of "Iron Man's" showing this week. Finally, just in case, I haven't made my point annoyingly clear, only 31 films released so far this year have made more than $31 million total.

It's been three weeks of Tony Stark's dominance, and you all are probably getting as sick of hearing about as I am of writing about it. So, next week, I promise things around here will be iron free. I have updated the Horrors of 2008 spreadsheet. Not too much action, but we're only one weekend away from the next big horror release.