Bee Movie Stings Weekend Box Office (Or Buzzes It Or Something)

In these days of aggressive opening weekend box office promotion it's rare for a film to reach the US weekend box office number one in its second week, but that's exactly what Bee Movie has done.

Bee Movie - the computer animated bee-based movie about bees written by Seinfeld star Jerry Seinfeld - has managed to out-do American Gangster, the movie that beat it to the weekend box office top spot last week, in its second week of release. And since Bee Movie has shown that movies can climb the weekend box office in successive weeks, let's hope that Lions For Lambs follows the trend next week and goes from having a deeply crappy weekend box office outing to the giddy heights of having just a slightly crappy weekend box office outing in seven days' time.

This time last week it looked like Bee Movie had been well and truly spanked at the weekend box office by American Gangster, the movie with billboards that loudly proclaim it to be the equal to The Godfather, one of the most critically-revered films of all time. Fast forward seven days and Bee Movie is the new box office number one - losing just 31% of its opening weekend gross against American Gangster's 44% - which proves that, while 'as good as The Godfather' is a decent enough plaudit, 'Sort of the same as Antz and A Bug's Life but quite good if you haven't seen either of those films' is better. Here's this week's US weekend box office top five…

1 - Bee Movie (Now that Bee Movie is officially a weekend box office success, it means two things will happen. Firstly Jerry Seinfeld is going to look like even more of an ego-driven billionaire madman when he appears on talkshows and secondly he can start writing Bee Movie's sequel - an animated love story between Renee Zellweger and every single one of the world's oceans entitled Sea Movie) $26,000,000

2 - American Gangster (Perhaps the reason why American Gangster is no longer the weekend box office number one is because of Jay-Z's new American Gangster album - having a rapper release an album named after your movie days after its release might have confused the public slightly. And, equally, we're going to blame Lions For Lambs' box office failure on the forthcoming Lions For Lambs album by 1986's Holiday Rap hitmakers MC Miker G & DJ Sven) $24,319,000

3 - Fred Claus (Proving that you should never release a Christmas movie seven weeks before Christmas, not even really shit ones that everybody hates) $19,225,000

4 - Lions For Lambs (It's official - Tom Cruise movies don't do well at the box office unless he spuriously gets engaged to his unconvincing girlfriend or has a baby with her in the days and weeks before they're released. Forcing her to run a marathon just isn't going to cut it, Tom) $6,710,000 

5 - Dan In Real Life (Proving that audiences are still being fooled into thinking that Steve Carrell's face on a movie poster means hilarious laughs are in store instead of a bittersweet story of a grieving husband coming to terms with his loss) $5,872,000

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Weekend Box Office - Box Office Mojo