Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

By Quinn Bender
movieset.com

An extremely close race for the top grossing film this holiday weekend saw Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs surge into a strong second place finish, merely $630,000 behind the heavyweight sci-fi action flick, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

The studios representing the two movies made the unusual move Sunday to each claim $42.5-million gross over the holiday weekend for first place. (It's an odd Hollywood custom of claiming your box office rank based on Friday and Saturday estimates, and Sunday projections.)

Fox had hoped Ice Age would halt the  dominance of Paramount's Transformers after narrowly achieving the top spot with Wednesday's extended holiday-weekend calculations. Unfortunately, Monday's acutals put Ice Age at $41.7 with Transformers on top with $42.3.

So confident of victory was Fox that they had earlier released an illustration of the competition's leading robot, Bumble Bee, transforming into the cheeky Ice Age rodent, Scrat.

Here's the breakdown of how the weekend movies performed, based on Monday's actual dollar figures: Transformers 2: $42,320,877; Ice Age 3: $41,690,382; Public Enemies: $25, 271, 675; The Proposal: $12, 857, 482; The Hangover: $11,268,413. Check out Box Office Mojo for the full weekend box office summary.