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“Puss in Boots” snatched the domestic box office title from a band of working-class thieves in the new Eddie Murphy action-comedy “Tower Heist,” studio estimates released on Sunday showed.

“Puss in Boots,” an animated spinoff from the blockbuster “Shrek” movies, nabbed an estimated $48 million in global ticket sales during its second weekend in theaters.

That included an unexpectedly strong $33 million from U.S. and Canadian theaters, putting the 3D family film in first place domestically for the second week in a row.

This week’s win came as a surprise as industry watchers had forecast “Tower Heist” would steal the show. Domestic sales for “Puss” dropped just 3 percent from last week, far less than the typical decline of at least 40 percent after a debut weekend.

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Now here’s some monkey business that everyone in Hollywood will take seriously! ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ conquered the box office with a tremendous $54 million in its debut weekend. The $90 million Fox reboot/prequel exceeded all expectations and churned out the fifth-best August opening of all time. And it did it all without any of that pesky 3D!

‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ played primarily to an older male crowd. According to exit polling, 56 percent of the audience was male, while 59 percent were over the age of 25. Notably, 20 percent of the audience was at least 50 years old – perhaps fans of the original 1968 film. For the most part, viewers liked what they saw, as they gave ‘Rise’ a strong “A-” CinemaScore grade.

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“Cowboys & Aliens” had the heft of two popular genres going for it.

The film, one of the most expensive movies to be released this year, also boasted two A-list actors in veterans Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig. And it had two Hollywood bigwigs behind the camera — Steven Spielberg as executive producer and “Iron Man’s” Jon Favreau as director, who in recent weeks has been exhaustively promoting the movie. And it was received well by the fanboy audience at Comic-Con International in San Diego, where it premiered late last month.

But rather than opening to twice the success, the film had disappointing ticket sales this weekend. In a surprise, ”The Smurfs” — a critically panned live-action/computer-animated hybrid movie based on characters that originated more than 50 years ago — grossed far more than pre-release polling had indicated. As a result, on Sunday the studios behind the pictures estimated that each film would collect $36.2 million domestically by weekend’s end. Meanwhile, the weekend’s other new wide release, the adult romantic comedy “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” brought in a decent $19.3 million.

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Sylvester Stallone has proven that he’s not quite expendable yet at the box office.

Stallone and his pumped-up pals lifted Lionsgate’s 1980s-style action romp “The Expendables” to a No. 1 debut with $35 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

While the macho “Expendables” lured male audiences, Julia Roberts delivered a crowd-pleaser for women with Sony’s “Eat Pray Love,” which opened at No. 2 with $23.7 million.

The previous weekend’s top movie, Sony’s cop comedy “The Other Guys,” slipped to third place with $18 million, raising its 10-day total to $70.5 million. The Warner Bros. blockbuster “Inception” was fourth with $11.4 million, lifting its total to $248.6 million.

Opening in fifth place with $10.5 million was Universal’s graphic-novel adaptation “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” starring Michael Cera as a slacker caught up in duels to the death with his new girlfriend’s seven evil ex-boyfriends.

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The science-fiction thriller “Inception” was the No. 1 movie at U.S. and Canadian theaters this weekend, taking in $62.8 million in ticket sales for Time Warner Inc.’s Warner Bros.

“Despicable Me,” from Universal Pictures, fell to second place with $32.8 million in its second weekend, researcher Hollywood.com Box-Office said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. Among other new films, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” was third with $17.6 million, Hollywood.com said.

“Inception,” director Christopher Nolan’s first film since “The Dark Knight” was released in 2008, is the third first-place opening for Time Warner this year. Sales were helped by critical praise, getting a favorable evaluation from 156 of 187 reviews compiled on the fan site Rottentomatoes.com.

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“The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” has risen to an $82.5 million haul over the long Fourth of July weekend and lifted its total to $175.3 million after just six days, according to studio estimates Monday.

The vampire romance from Summit Entertainment finished at No. 1 over the four-day weekend, despite a steep drop in its daily take after a $68.5 million start last Wednesday, the second biggest opening day ever.

“Movies that pop this big on opening day, it’s virtually impossible to keep up that breakneck pace,” said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. “We’ve seen this with a lot of movies where the first day is their biggest day, then it kind of settles into a more normal pattern.”

Coming in second for the weekend with $53.2 million from Friday to Monday was Paramount’s action fantasy “The Last Airbender,” pushing its total to $70.5 million since opening Thursday. The movie did strong business despite terrible reviews.

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Two Wild West heroes entered the box-office arena this weekend. Only one gunslinger made it out with victory to his name. That badge-wielding cowboy goes by the name of Woody, the pull-string action figure at the center of “Toy Story 3,” Pixar’s latest effort that easily outgunned “Jonah Hex.”

“Toy Story 3″ emerged in first place this weekend with a fantastic $109 million haul, the best opening weekend ever for any Pixar film to date. “The Incredibles” held the previous record with $70.5 million. At the start of the weekend, some box-office analysts predicted that the third “Toy Story” installment could break the best opening weekend record for an animated film, though the latest adventure of Andy’s toys settled for the second best record behind “Shrek the Third” ($121.6 million).

In contrast to the “Toy Story” threequel’s massively successful opening performance was “Jonah Hex,” Warner Bros.’ adaptation of the DC Comics Western hero. Even with the involvement of high-profile actors like Josh Brolin and Megan Fox, “Jonah Hex” was unable to overcome harsh critical backlash and bad prerelease buzz, resulting in a dismal $5.1 million eighth-place finish.

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Even with four major new releases hitting theaters this weekend, box-office supremacy remained in the clutches of the mean green ogre known as Shrek. “Shrek Forever After,” the franchise’s fourth installment, topped the charts with a $25.3 million haul from Friday through Sunday, marking the film’s third consecutive weekend victory.

Of the weekend’s new releases, “Get Him to the Greek” performed the best. The raunchy comedy stars Jonah Hill as a young talent agent and Russell Brand as Aldous Snow, the troubled rock star first introduced in 2008′s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” “Greek” managed a respectable $17.4 million haul, nearly halving its reported $40 million production budget.

Although “Greek” wasn’t able to best “Shrek,” it did manage to defeat “Killers,” the spy-themed romantic comedy starring Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl as a married couple drawn into the deadly world of espionage. The film earned a third-place finish worth $16.1 million.

The weekend’s other major new releases, “Marmaduke” and “Splice,” stayed out of the top five altogether with sixth- and eighth-place finishes, respectively. It’s a particularly disappointing finish for the Owen Wilson-starring “Marmaduke,” as the family film was the widest new release of the weekend by a significant margin of over 300 theaters.

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This past weekend was the most sluggish Memorial Day at the movies since 1995—a bad omen for summer business, since the May holiday is typically one of the bigger release frames. The Sex and the City sequel—ye of $153 million in 2008—wilted under the critics’ heat lamp. So did Disney’s Prince of Persia, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and his pectorals. What gives?

Good news first! If our luck holds, we may be spared Sex and the City 3 or Prince of Persia: Obligatory After-Colon Clause. SATC2’s blah outing—an estimated average of less than $15,000 per theater over four days—means this franchise is likely kaput. The movie opened Thursday (Wednesday at midnight in some locations) to capture pre-holiday travelers, but the reviews were noxious, and their odoriferous stink traveled fast. Meanwhile, Prince of Persia put its chips on a biceptual Boy Next Door, and action-star status is something that Gyllenhaal perhaps wasn’t ready for. With a production budget of $200 million and a $100 million marketing campaign, the movie’s estimated $37.8 million haul looks even more piddling.

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Shares of DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc dived as much as 13.7 percent on Monday after a tepid opening weekend for “Shrek Forever After” and at least one analyst cut his view on the stock.

The film, the fourth in the successful animated “Shrek” franchise about a green ogre and his talking donkey, earned $71.3 million in its first three days of release. That fell far short of some analysts’ forecasts for more than $100 million.

“The market is selling because it’s convinced the franchise is dead and the enterprise value of DreamWorks is lower because of that,” said Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities research analyst who rates the stock “neutral.”

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