Weekend Box Office (11/13/11): Immortals surprises with strong #1 debut, Jack and Jill underperforms (for Adam Sandler), Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar opens well.

In what counts as a somewhat pleasant surprise, Reletivity's Immortals topped the box office this weekend with a solid $32 million debut.  Tarsam's highly stylized Greek hack-and-slash action film was sold as a glorified rip-off of 300, which opened with $70 million back in March 2007.  If it needs to be said (because others are indeed whining), expecting Immortals to open as well as the lightening-in-a-bottle 300 (or even Clash of the Titans) makes about as much sense as expecting Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief to open as well as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  The budget for this one was allegedly just $75 million, and much of that was apparently supplemented by foreign pre-sales.  The film also earned another $36 million overseas, giving it a near-$70 million worldwide debut.  Relativity took a major chance on the picture, fully financing it themselves and selling the heck out of it for at least the last six months.  Immortals received a B from Cinemascore and was heavily front-loaded, earning $15 million on Friday night alone for a pretty poor 2.1x weekend multiplier.  So while the domestic run may be brief, the new distributor Relativity needed to prove that they could open an expensive movie to quasi-blockbuster numbers (it's already their second-biggest grossing movie, behind the $79 million haul of Limitless).  On that scale, mission: accomplished.