May the box office be ever in your favor! The Hunger Games outlasted competition from newcomers American Reunion and not-so-new Titanic 3D to top the box office for the third weekend in a row.  Hunger Games pulled in an estimated $33.5 million, a drop of about 43% from last week's numbers, but still managed to cross a $400 million worldwide mark.   Second-week showings of Wrath of the Titans and Mirror Mirror rounded out the top five respectively. Hit the jump for the analysis, including a big mover who almost cracked the top ten.

It's no surprise that The Hunger Games continues to dominate the box office considering there was little new competition introduced this Holiday weekend.  What's a little surprising, at least to me, is that the re-release of Titanic in 3D pulled in over an estimated $25 million.  That's $25 million for one extra dimension or a bit of big screen nostalgia. Personally, I found this honest trailer for Titanic to be more worth my time and money, but I digress.

Speaking of nostalgia, the cast of American Pie reunited in this weekend's American Reunion. Being the fourth theatrical release of the franchise since the original classic debuted in 1999, the comedy was essentially neck-and-neck in a battle for familiarity along with Titanic, as both pictures brought in an average estimated amount of $6,500 per theater (with Reunion having the slight edge).  We'll see how they fare next week as The Cabin in the Woods, Lockout and The Three Stooges debut to muddy up the box office waters.

As far as sequels go, Wrath of the Titans was received more favorably than its predecessor, but still has some financial ground to make up domestically.  The mythological movie battled a fairly steep box office drop of about 55% from its opening numbers.  Less severe of a drop was Relativity's Mirror Mirror which brought in an estimated $11 million, about a 40% drop from its debut, perhaps due in part to an additional, though small, theater pickup. Now let's have a look at the bottom five of the top ten.

21 Jump Street saw a decent return on the weekend with an estimated box office in excess of $10 million, twice that of the next-in-line Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.  This being a holiday weekend, I would have expected The Lorax to get a family friendly bump, but perhaps Sunday's numbers will reflect that.  The CBS film, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, continues to stay in the top ten, earning not quite a million in its fifth week of release.  The sad story continues for Disney's John Carter, which was pulled from over half of its theaters and took a box office hit because of it. The near 60% drop from last week's numbers resulted in a receipt of a paltry $820,000 (estimated). Universal's Safe House, the old man of the group at nine weeks running, took the final spot in the top ten, with an estimated half-a-million dollars, after being on the outside looking in last week.  In a surprise surge, due mostly to its expanded theatrical presence, Gareth Evans' The Raid: Redemption grabbed an additional 130 theaters and more than doubled its box office take from the previous week.