Gravity is still America's most popular film at the cinemas, as the Sandra Bullock and George Clooney-starring sci-fi disaster movie has held strong for it's third consecutive weekend at the top of the box office. Despite some strong competition from newcomer Carrie and some other new titles from the week, the 3D and IMAX phenomenon is still performing strongly and sitting pretty at the top of the film chart.

Gravity
Gravity is still top at the box office

Gravity's weekend gross reflected a disappointing three days for the movie business, with only $31 million coming in from cinema-goers since Friday. Still, this has proved to be enough to keep it's nearest competitor at bay and enjoy yet more success. Providing Carrie or Captain Phillips don't have an overwhelming and unprecedented night of success this evening (20 October), then Gravity will quite easily continue to dominate the US box office.

As reported by Variety, in just three weeks at the cinema, Gravity has earned a reported $170.6 million domestically, and will look to earn even more when it is distributed across overseas markets. Helped by a stream of positive reviews and a positive word-of-mouth-gathered reputation from cinema-goers, the film has enjoyed one of the most impressive October's in recent cinema history and furthered it's claim for Oscar success next year.

Carrie
Carrie underperformed slightly, and should finish third in it's opening weekend

The Chloe Moretz-starring remake of Carrie was predicted to earn at least $20 million over the weekend since it was released on Friday (18 Oct.), however it failed to achieve it's target by a few million, earning just over $17 million. Still, with an estimated budget of just $30 million, the film's producers probably aren't losing too much sleep from this slight under-performance. Given the weekend's takings, Carrie should make up the rest of it's budget by the end of next week. Still, a third place entry into a box office consisting of older titles isn't great for the horror remake, but with two critically acclaimed pictures ahead of it (Captain Phillips was second, behind Gravity), it's underwhelming take was to be expected somewhat.

The other newcomers of the week; Escape Plan and The Fifth Estate, performed with varying success. As expected from the Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger romp, Escape Plan played to a mostly adult audience and gained a respectable $9.8 million over the weekend. An amount that matches predictions for the action thriller.

Meanwhile, the Benedict Cumberbatch and Daniel Brühl-starring The Fifth Estate bombed tremendously, earning only $1.7 million in it's opening weekend. With Disney initially planning on only releasing the film on a limited basis, given the poor returns from the WikiLeaks dramatisation, they probably should have kept to the original plan.

The full box office list will be made available tomorrow when the final figures have been gathered.

The Fifth Estate
The Fifth Estate was supposed to have a limited release, and suffered through Disney's over-confidence