The virus apocalypse film ‘Contagion’ placed 2nd this weekend taking in $14.4 million domestically. It was only off a very respectable 35% from its debut last week, but unfortunately it was very overshadowed by the 3D re-release of the almost 20-year-old ‘The Lion King’ which took in $29.3 million.

After 7 weeks in theaters, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ is still hanging on to the top 10. ‘Rise’ came in  9th with $2.6 million bringing its worldwide total to $391 million. It just shows that even with a reboot of a very old franchise, if you aim high (in terms of intelligence) audiences (through word-of-mouth) will hit the theaters.

Outside the top 10, a number of films finally left the theaters with some very nice worldwide box office grosses including ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2’ ($1.3 billion), and  ‘Captain America: The First Avenger’ ($358 million).

‘Spy Kids: All the Time in the World’ continues to scrape along at the box office with $1.5 million over the weekend. The film’s total box office will probably peak out at about $53 million. ‘Apollo 18’ continued its descent certainly never to reach the moon. It took in just $1 million to bring its domestic total to $23 million. ‘Cowboys & Aliens’ is within about $1 million dollars of crossing that $100 million threshold as it rides into the sunset in theaters. The film is currently at $98.8 million domestically and will probably end with about $170 million for its total worldwide box office. ‘Conan the Barbarian’ took in just $78k domestically this weekend and its worldwide total will probably end in a very wimpy $50 million for the expensive reboot.

1. ‘The Lion King’ (3D)   $29.3 million
2. ‘Contagion’    $14.4 million
3. ‘Drive’ (2011)   $11.0 million
4. ‘The Help’    $6.4 million
5. ‘Straw Dogs’ (2011)   $5.0 million
6. ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’ $4.2 million
7. ‘The Debt’    $2.9 million
8. ‘Warrior’    $2.7 million
9. ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ $2.6 million
10. ‘Colombiana’   $2.3 million