“Prince Caspian” reigns over box office

Move over, Iron Man. “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” made its movie debut over the weekend ending May 19 and generated $55,034,805 in ticket sales, ruling over “Iron Man,” which had won the box office war for the past two weeks. Worldwide, “Chronicles” sold $744.8 million worth of tickets. Distributed by Walt Disney Co., it is the second film based on the books by C.S. Lewis. For lovers of the books, there will be a third film, “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” in 2010.

In its third weekend, “Iron Man,” produced by Paramount Pictures and starring Robert Downey Jr., lost some of its gleam by generating $31.2 million. That was a drop from its debut of $100.8 million two weekends ago, the strongest debut this year, but the film has earned $222.5 million in ticket sales since its opening on May 2.

Dropping from second place to a distant third this weekend at $13,883,874 was “What Happens in Vegas,” the Cameron Diaz/Ashton Kutcher comedy from Fox Studio.

Warner Brother’s “Speed Racer” ranked a disappointing fourth with $7.65 million. The film is adapted from the ‘60s cartoon series about a racecar driver and was written and produced by the Wachowski brothers. They created the “Matrix” films.

The comedy “Baby Mama,” starring writer/actress Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, delivered a fifth-place win with $4.59 million worth of ticket sales in its fourth weekend. It was brought to the screen by General Electric Co.’s Universal Pictures.

The remaining five of the top ten are “Made of Honor” at $4.5 million, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” at $2.54 million, “Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay” at $1.8 million, “The Forbidden Kingdom” at $1 million, and “The Visitor” at $687,000.

Overall, box office ticket sales are down 3.7 percent to $3.09 billion for the year and attendance is down 6.4 percent.

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