Going into this weekend, there were some people who believed Sony’s remake of Total Recall would give The Dark Knight Rises a run for its money. Those people were wrong. With an estimate of $36.4 million, TDKR claimed its third straight weekend at number one while Total Recall barely topped the debut of the Arnold Schwarzenegger original… back in 1990.

Do you hear that?  That’s the sound of new images from four 20th Century Fox movies:

• Neighborhood Watch – Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade star in the alien invasion comedy.
• Life of Pi – Ang Lee is directing the adaptation of Yann Martel‘s fantasy adventure novel with Suraj Sharma in the lead.
• Ice Age: Continental Drift – Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, and Queen Latifah reprise their characters in the fourth entry in the animated series.
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days – Zachary Gordon, Steve Zahn, and Robert Capron are back to depict more of the awkward adventures of middle schooler Greg Heffley

Images after the break.

Ouch.  Though it seemed likely after Friday’s figures were announced, the fact that Fox’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules so easily topped the flashier Sucker Punch has still got to hurt the folks at Warners this morning.

In what turned out to be a closer race than many expected, the highly-hyped fanboy fantasy flick Sucker Punch placed first on Friday, besting  Fox’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules by less than one million dollars.  Zack Snyder’s latest feature claimed an estimated $8 million from 3,033 locations. With 2011’s box office record in mind, that is a decent start – especially as tracking put the film neck and neck or even slightly behind its Wimpy competition until early this morning.  Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 earned $7.3 million from 3,167 locations and with strong Saturday figures could easily pass Sucker Punch by the time weekend estimates are released.  Both features are expected to bring in $20 million by Sunday, leaving no clear front runner in the weekend race at this point.  Details and analysis tomorrow.

By most accounts, last year’s attempt to bring the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books to the screen resulted in a moderately charming family film.  Diary grossed enough on a responsible budget to merit a sequel, Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2: Rodrick Rules.  Zachary Gordon, Devon Bostick, Rachael Harris, and Steve Zahn return as the Heffleys.  David Bowers (Astro Boy) directs from a script by Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs (90210).  Rodrick Rules is due March 25th, six days after the first film bowed  in 2010.  Hit the jump to watch a new teaser trailer.

After siphoning away 30% of Alice in Wonderland‘s precious 3D screens, Dreamworks Animation’s How To Train Your Dragon was the big winner this weekend – although its total may have been a bit under what the studio was hoping for.

As expected, Alice in Wonderland had more than enough momentum to take its third trip to the top of this weekend’s box office chart. Not quite as expected was the name of the film that took second place. Fox’s under-marketed Diary of a Wimpy Kid outperformed the insanely over-hyped launch of The Bounty Hunter… tabloid romance and all.

Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland took the heads off of its competition again on Friday, earning an estimated $9.8 million entering its third weekend in theatres. The 3D flick held on to about 43% of last Friday’s grosses and is on track to add another $30 million to its coffers by Sunday. That’s bad news for the three new wide releases. Of those, The Bounty Hunter had the best showing. The Jennifer Aniston/Gerard Butler vehicle opened with an estimated $7.6 million – good enough for second place. Fox’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid, an adaptation of the children’s book series, wasn’t expected to take in more than $10 million for the entire weekend thanks to the family-siphoning power of Wonderland. After a better than expected Friday of $7.4 million, however, Wimpy now seems poised to overtake Bounty Hunter for the weekend’s second spot. Finally, things look bleak for Universal’s Repo Men.  The high-concept action pic could only scrounge up $2.2 million from its 2,521 locations. Full details on all of the weekend’s releases when you check back tomorrow.

Box Office Mojo has some release date changes/announcements and we wanted to let you know about so you can be upset at a delay or pleased at the haste.  First up, The Eagle of the Ninth, the sword-and-sandals flick starring Channing Tatum, has landed a specific release date of September 24th.  It had previously been scheduled for “September 2009″.

Meanwhile, Fox is moving the family film Diary of a Wimpy Kid out of the April 2nd battlefield (when Clash of the Titans, Repo Men, and Why Did I get Married Too are scheduled to debut) and moving it to March 19th where it will square off against the rom-com The Bounty Hunter (starring Gerard Butler and Jennifer Aniston), the rock biopic The Runaways (starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning; click here to read Steve’s Sundance review of the film), and the medieval action flick Season of the Witch (starring Nicolas Cage, Nicolas Cage’s hairpiece, and Ron Perlman).

Finally, The Duplass Brothers’ Cyrus, starring John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, and Jonah Hill, will hit theaters on July 9th where it will face Nimrod Antal’s Predators and the animated comedy Despicable Me.

The book series for Diary of a Wimpy Kid is ridiculously popular, but I’ve never even bothered to flip through a copy. The logline of the movie reads, “Follows the travails of wise-cracking middle school student Greg Heffley over the course of an academic year.”  I might have to make the painfully minimal effort of flipping through some pages next time I’m at Borders because the trailer for the film just landed online and it’s okay.  Yes, there are the clichés, (the Mom yelling something embarrassing at her kid in front of all the other kids) and jokes that feel like they’re trying way too hard (kid bragging about his weird freckle). There are funny moments but they don’t ring true to anything that would happen in middle school.  Yeah, it’s funny to consider how a guy would wrestle a girl in gym class or if a dumb friend naively told a guy he had a cute butt, but you can’t relate to those moments because they don’t feel real.  Hopefully, the film on the whole will be better.

Check out the trailer after the jump.  Diary of a Wimpy Kid hits theaters on April 2nd.