‘Blades of Glory’ puts box office on ice

updated 9:13 a.m. ET April 2, 2007

LOS ANGELES - Stars-on-ice Will Ferrell and Jon Heder took the box office gold for the weekend.

Paramount and DreamWorks’ “Blades of Glory,” with Ferrell and Heder playing figure-skating rivals who become the sport’s first men’s pair, debuted as the No. 1 movie with $33 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Disney’s animated adventure “Meet the Robinsons,” about the time-traveling journey of a brilliant but lonely orphan, debuted in second place with $25.1 million.

The previous weekend’s top movie — the Warner Bros. animated tale “TMNT,” a revival of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” franchise — slipped to fourth place with $9.2 million, down a steep 62 percent from its $24.3 million debut. “TMNT” raised its 10-day total to $38.4 million.

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After a monthlong surge, the overall box office declined. The top 12 movies took in $115 million, down 13 percent from the same weekend last year, when “Ice Age: The Meltdown” opened with $68 million.

“This is still a good weekend, a pretty healthy one-two punch with ‘Blades of Glory’ and ‘Meet the Robinsons’ at the top,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Media By Numbers.

Movie attendance is up 4 percent so far this year, Dergarabedian said.

Box office results Estimated ticket sales for July 3-5 1 (tie). "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," $42.5 million. 1 (tie). "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," $42.5 million. 3. "Public Enemies," $26.2 million. 4. "The Proposal," $12.8 million. 5. "The Hangover," $10.4 million. 6. "Up," $6.6 million. 7. "My Sister's Keeper," $5.3 million. 8. "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3," $2.5 million. 9 (tie). "Year One," $2.1 million. 9. (tie). "Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian," $2.1 million.

Teaming with “Napoleon Dynamite” star Heder on “Blades of Glory,” Ferrell scored the second-best opening of his career, behind last summer’s “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” which took in $47 million in its first weekend.

“It starts with a great concept, and the whole picture was cast so well,” said DreamWorks spokesman Marvin Levy. “Another part of the surprise was, we got a ton of very, very good reviews.”

“Meet the Robinsons” played in about 3,400 theaters and did especially well in a 3-D version at 600 cinemas, said Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney. The studio did not have a precise breakdown, but cinemas reported that screens playing the 3-D version pulled in about double the grosses of theaters running the regular 2-D version, Viane said.

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