Below are the top 12 weekend estimates from the North American box office:

1. Watchmen - $55,655,000
2. Tyler Perry's Madea Goes To Jail - $8,800,000
3. Taken - $7,450,000
4. Slumdog Millionaire - $6,925,000
5. Paul Blart: Mall Cop - $4,200,000
6. He's Just Not That Into You - $4,020,000
7. Coraline - $3,313,000
8. Confessions Of A Shopaholic - $3,121,000
9. Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience - $2,785,000
10. Fired Up - $2,600,000
11. Gran Torino - $2,100,000
12. The Reader - $2,086,000

Overall, the Box Office was up 18% on last weekend's total gross.

The Box Office saw its first official blockbuster with the debut of Zack Snyder's WATCHMEN which earned an estimated $55.6M over the weekend. This is a strong opening, but it still fell well short of Snyder's previous effort 300, and given that the film had a $150M budget, the film will need to have strong word-of-mouth to keep the revenue ticking over.

The remaining films in the Top 12 could not individually make $10M, despite being holdovers and continuing to perform relatively well given how long they have been in the marketplace. The two films that are still doing incredibly well are TAKEN and SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. The former is doggedly sticking to a spot within the top 4 films, which it has continued to do so since opening, while the latter is still enjoying the attention it received on Oscar night. Both films have become highly profitable for their respective distributors and will likely to do more business over the next few weeks. One should also note that PAUL BLART: MALL COP is likewise following a simliar box office behavioural pattern, still earning good numbers and has earned $133M domestically against a $26M budget. If nothing else, these three films prove that smaller budgets can produce excellent returns.

The US Box Office took in an estimated total of $103 million for the whole of the weekend 6-8 March 2009.