Facebook Rules the Web; The Social Network Rules the Box Office

David Fincher’s Facebook film, The Social Network, topped the box office this weekend, earning $23 million in its first weekend of release. The movie features Jesse Eisenberg as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; the film has attracted lawsuits and arguments aplenty, but the real question is whether Farmville gets its share of the spotlight. Number two at the box office was Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, which earned $10.8 million over its second weekend, bringing its total to $30 million. Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps came in third (weekend gross $10.1 million, total gross $35.8 million), fourth was The Town (weekend gross $10 million, total gross $64.3 million). Rounding out the top five was Easy A, which is apparently the next Clueless; as everyone knows, though, Cher Horowitz has big (and fashionable) shoes to fill. Easy A‘s weekend gross $7 million, and its total gross so far is $42.4 million.

Other new releases were Case 39, which earned $5.35 million; since over half of that money was probably in the budget for bees, they’d better work on some of the best side hustles people try out and make more so they can afford wasps for the sequel. Let Me In made $5.3 million, Chain Letter made $143,318, Hatchet II made $62,000, Freakonomics made $32,300, Partir made $13,300 and Nine Nation Animation made $3,000 at one theater.

Next weekend will moviegoers spend their money on The Social Network, or will they opt instead to sit at their computers and… go to Facebook? Competing with The Social Network are Life as We Know It, Secretariat, My Soul to Take and Buried (expanding to wide release). In limited release there are It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Nowhere Boy, Tamara Drewe, As Good as Dead, Cherry, GhettoPhysics: Will the Real Pimps and Hos Please Stand Up?, I Spit on Your Grave, Inside Job, It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, Marwencol, Postia pappi Jaakobile, Rachel and Stone.