Superbad: Triumph of the Nerds

In high school, there are the good-looking kids, and, several rungs down on the social ladder, the rest. For once, both groups shared the spotlight.

While the shiny-happy High School Musical 2 kept the kids planted in front of their TVs on Friday night, the sweaty-palmed Superbad got the geek-curious to movie theaters, helping the R-rated comedy to a $31.2 million opening weekend, per estimates from Exhibitor Relations Sunday.

Superbad's box-office leading debut was bigger than those of The 40-Year-Old Virgin ($21.4 million in 2005) and Knocked Up ($30.7 million in June), the two hit movies sharing a lineage (filmmaker Judd Apatow) and an aesthetic (sex humor with a heart of gold) with the latest entry.

Apatow, who directed Virgin and Knocked Up, produced Superbad, which was cowritten by Seth Rogen, who starred as the accidental father in Knocked Up, and costarred as a cop in Superbad.

There are no such cross-connections between Superbad and HSM2, which likely worked out best for the two parties.

"The audience for Superbad is completely different from High School Musical," Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo said simply Sunday.

Thus, even with the premiere of HSM2 averaging more than 17 million puppy-love lovers for the Disney Channel on Friday, and setting a TV record for viewership among children age 6-11, there was no danger of the cool-kids tale stealing popcorn money from the so-uncool-it's-cool Superbad, which as reported by Deadline Hollywood Daily, drew 60 percent of its audience from the post-clique-reliant 18-30 crowd.

"You have the conservative side, and a little more raunchy side," Exhibitor Relations' Jeff Bock said Sunday of HSM2 and Superbad. "You covered all bases here."

The overall effect, if any, of HSM2 on the box office was unclear. On one hand, the combined gross for the top 12 movies was down 21 percent this weekend from last. On the other hand, the top movies' combined gross was up 21 percent when compared to the same weekend last year, when HSM2 was just a glint in the Disney Channel's eye, and Snakes on a Plane proved that sometimes Internet buzz isn't worth the monthly cost of your service provider.

Certainly, HSM2 didn't seem to siphon ticket sales from the other new family movies—there weren't any. And, with the exception of the winding-down Hairspray (seventh place, $4.3 million; $100.6 million), which costars HSM's Zac Efron, and the never-got-started Underdog (eighth place, $3.6 million; $31.7 million), there weren't even any PG movies in the top 10.

It also seems unlikely that HSM2 put a hurt into The Invasion, although something clearly did. The PG-13-rated Nicole Kidman-Daniel Craig sci-fi thriller, a remake of the previously remade Invasion of the Body Snatchers, barely broke out of its pod, with $6 million for a quiet fifth-place debut.

Elsewhere, last weekend's champ, Rush Hour 3, suffered the obligatory nosedive, but banked another $21.8 million (second place) and hit $88.2 million overall.

The Bourne Ultimatum (third place) added $19 million to its tally, for a towering total of $163.8 million, or just $2 million or so shy of The Simpsons Movie (fourth place, $6.7 million; $165.1 million overall).

The romantic comedy No Reservations ($2.3 million; $36.5 million overall, per Box Office Mojo) and the Eddie Murphy-free Daddy Day Camp ($1.8 million; $8.8 million overall, per Box Office Mojo) were both forced out of the top 10 after undistinguished stays.

Becoming Jane ($3 million; $9.2 million overall) added 585 theaters, but continued to lurk outside the top 10, which, all things considered, was a better fate than that of the new knight tale The Last Legion, which didn't screen for critics, and didn't play to audiences, bringing in just $2.6 million on 2,002 screens.

In limited release, the Donkey Kong documentary, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, went full-tilt with $50,294 at only five theaters, while the Leonardo DiCaprio-backed environmental reality check, The 11th Hour, came up with $42,000 at only four theaters.

It's impossible to gauge where HSM2 would have stacked up if it had been released in theaters—not without some ifs. If 17 million people had bought tickets (at an average price of $6.58, per a Box Office Mojo estimate), then it would have grossed more than $111 million. But that math only holds if every viewer willing to watch it for (essentially) free was willing to plunk down allowance earnings, if its kid-sized audience bought full-fare tickets (which, of course, they wouldn't), and if parents volunteered to haul the troops off to the theater.

A truer test will come if the in-the-works High School Musical 3 debuts on the big screen, as is the talk.

"Honestly, the next High School Musical is going to come out in theaters—it just has to," Bock said. "It's just playing so well. If they can, it's going to be gold."

Not to mention superbad.

Here's a rundown of the top 10 films based on Friday-Sunday estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

1. Superbad, $31.2 million
2. Rush Hour 3, $21.8 million
3. The Bourne Ultimatum, $19 million
4. The Simpsons Movie, $6.7 million
5. The Invasion, $6 million
6. Stardust, $5.2 million
7. Hairspray, $4.3 million
8. Underdog, $3.6 million
9. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, $3.54 million
10. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, $3.5 million