Mission: Possible at the Box Office

It another weekend, which means it's time for another installment of Weekends at TDI! For those of you who are new to this site, every weekend we give you a look at how the three major American stock markets performed, week-to-week. Compared to last week, did they take in big gains, or did they lose? (SPOILER: This week, they gained.)

Then we give you a look at the estimated total intake from the box office over the weekend. We even do it slightly different. We don't label them as "one, two, three", even though they're in that order. And for how much the movies make, well, we assume that you know that "$7.8" for a movie means "$7.8 million," so we only give you "$7.8".

This week, the stock market soared to a new high once again, which helps, because April? Not so kind to everybody. But May seems to be bringing new life to the markets, with all three major players seeing big gains for the week. I could yammer on and on, but typically, nobody pays attention to the stock market portion of this feature. Honestly. I could type something really controversial, and no one would pick up on it. Oh well, there are a few of us who actually like the weekly stock report. So I'm not getting rid of it. Plus, that graphic below? Pretty.

(Source: Yahoo! Finance)

It's a mixed opening for Mission: Impossible 3 this weekend. First, the movie opened to great reviews from the critics, all full of praise for director JJ Abram's big debut on the big screen, even if it was heavily inspired by JJ's hit series, Alias. And the film is by far the king of the box office this weekend. However, films 1 and 2, after adjusting for inflation, took in $67 and $70 million each. The 3rd film debuted with $48 million. The on-going TomKat obsession is thought to have played a factor in lower-than-anticipated ticket sales.

Below are the estimated amount of people who went to see the top films this weekend:
1. Mission Impossible 3 - 7,733,494.3 million
2. RV - 1,787,439.6 million
3. An American Haunting - 1,027,375.2 million

And now, it's time for your weekly financal scoreboard report!

(Source: BoxOfficeMojo)

And that's it. Pretty painless, eh? Even if I am starting to add words to "Weekends". Remember, stay tuned to the twin Institutes for news, entertainment, photographs, opinion columns, and more! (Whenever I get around to updating, that is.)