Battle at the Box Office 4/18

Surprising no one, Rio was the number one movie at the box office this weekend, because every new animated movie this year is pretty much guaranteed to be at the top of the heap.  With a $40 million take this weekend, Rio now has the highest opening weekend of 2011, beating Hop’s opening weekend two weeks ago.  It was on the low side for both Dreamworks and Blue Sky Animation however.  Scream 4 was a distant second place with $19.3 million and was way below it’s predecessor Scream 3’s $34.7 million opening weekend.  The aforementioned Hop dropped down to third place, thanks to Rio stealing most of it’s audience.  Soul Surfer remained steady at fourth and Hanna dropped down to fifth.  Debuting on only 707 screens, The Conspirator managed to make $3.9 million and take the ninth place spot.  The only other big move was Your Highness, which barely held onto the tenth place, dropping from sixth last week.  Can Rio hold onto the top spot this weekend against the onslaught that is a new Tyler Perry movie?