Weekend Box Office (07/10/11): Transformers 3 tops again, Horrible Bosses scores, while Zookeeper slightly underwhelms.

The Autobots and Decepticons ruled the box office yet again, as the Middle East-occupation parable grossed another $47 million over the weekend.  That was a drop of 54%, which was smaller than the 61% drop for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen which had the Fourth of July holiday weekend to theoretically bump it up.  It was a larger drop than the 47% second-weekend drop for the original Transformers on this same weekend back in 2007.  In terms of actual dollars, Transformers: Dark of the Moon (review) had a larger second weekend than both prior Transformers pictures, despite opening slightly less than the second film ($180 million in six days versus $200 million in five days last time).  It now has $261 million in the domestic till, with an international total that should be around or at $600 million today (which would be a record twelve days).  It broke $500 million on Thursday, becoming the fastest film to do so in history (nine days).  While it opened smaller than the last picture, it relative quality (it is a more audience pleasing spectacle than the last) is allowing it to slowly catch up (Transformers 2 had $293 million at this point in its run). So far, it most resembles the 2004 July 4th contender, Spider-Man 2, which also had a $180 million six-day start and ended weekend two with $256 million (it ended up with $373 million).  Barring a complete collapse or faster screen loss due to a crowded marketplace, the picture seems destined to pull about $390 million domestic while becoming the second film this year (after Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) to cross $1 billion worldwide.  The big question is how it handles Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II, which opens next weekend and could theoretically also join the $1 billion club this year.