Friday saw a 15% decrease in box office revenue over the previous Friday.

1. Inglourious Basterds - $14.3M
2. District 9 - $5.5M
3. G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra - $3.6M
4. The Time Traveler's Wife - $3.3M
5. Julie & Julia - $2.6M
6. Shorts - $2M
7. G-Force - $1.2M
8. Post Grad - $1M
9. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - $0.94M
10. The Ugly Truth - $0.83M

Quentin Tarantino had the biggest opening day of his directorial career this Friday as his latest film INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS opened to a strong $14.3M. The film is on track for a $35-$40M opening which will be the biggest for his career. Despite its long running time, the film has been very well received, showing that Tarantino is still a hit with audiences thanks to his very unique style of dialogue-driven and gory/action story-telling.

After a stellar opening last Friday, DISTRICT 9 landed in second spot with an estimated $5.5M, losing an unhealthy 61% of its audience. There was always a big chance of this happening with this type of film, but this quasi-landmark piece of science fiction has earned $60M against a $30M budget so it is a big winner.

G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA still managed to hold on to third spot with an estimated $3.6M on Friday, dropping only 48% on last Friday. The film has a domestic box office tally of $111M and will finish well short of its $175M production budget.

Director Robert Rodriguez returned to the kids-flick genre this Friday with SHORTS. The film was a major disappointment given Rodriguez previous efforts (eg the Spy Kids trilogy) with the film only earning an estimated $2M on Friday. This will likely disappear very quickly after this weekend.

The only other new opener for Friday is POST GRAD, the comedy from Fox starring Gilmore Girl Alexis Bledel. The film will have an even worse time than SHORTS, only earning an estimated $1M on Friday.

Stay tuned for a more comprehensive wrap-up of the weekend box office in North America for 21-23 August 2009.

The Top 10 at the North American box office took in an estimated total of $35.5 million for the whole of Friday 21st August 2009.