It was a dream of a weekend for Leonardo DiCaprio and director Christopher Nolan. Their project Inception, in which a team of thought-thieves pilfer corporate secrets from their targets’ dreams, REM’ed its way to a $60.4 million box-office victory. No snoozer there.
Holdover Despicable Me scratched to second place with $32.7 million, while another newcomer, Disney’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, conjured up a disappointing $17.3 million for third. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Toy Story 3 rounded out the top five.
But while Eclipse and TS3 pushed their collective 2010 takes to $265 mil and $363 mil, respectively (TS3 is the year’s highest-grossing film), the story this weekend was Inception: A live-action, high-concept, original film released in (gasp) the summer. Isn’t summertime supposed to be the days of sequels and reboots and movies featuring1980s playthings? Could Inception be the start of a trend?
Color me skeptical. The high-wattage presence of DiCaprio and the pedigree of Nolan (the guy behind the camera of The Dark Knight) made Inception a reasonably safe bet for Warner Brothers. Still, I think the premise of the film (and the eye-catching trailers) drew lots of folks to the theaters, and the fact that it was pretty well crafted (well, I thought so, at any rate) may keep them coming back.
Or maybe Inception owes its success to teams of dream-agents scouring the country, invading our dreams and planting ideas like, “I’ve just got to see Inception! I don’t care if it’ll cost twelve bucks, not counting popcorn!”
Come to think of it, my sleep has been a bit restless …
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