1. Thor - $61.5 million (NEW)
2. Fast Five – $35 million (-59.4%)
3. Something Borrowed – $9.9 million (NEW)
4. Jumping the Broom – $8.3 million (NEW)
5. Rio – $8.2 million (-44.5%)
6. Water for Elephants – $5.9 million (-36.8%)
7. Madea’s Big Happy Fam. – $4.2 million (-57.4%)
8. Hoodwinked Too! – $2.4 million (-41.6%)
9. Soul Surfer – $2.3 million (-31.7%)
10. Prom - $2.1 million (-55.4%)

Marvel’s third of four lead-in films to The Avengers opens this weekend in the form of Thor.  Marketing has been solid and online buzz is strong, along with good early signs from MTC+RS tracking and Twitter.  However, Fast Five‘s strong opening and positive word of mouth could dampen things a bit for Thor and while the 3D surcharge may help, its current relevance to audiences is unknown right now.

Alex at BoxOffice.com has been following its buzz on Twitter this week and its generally been trending comfortably ahead of Clash of the Titans.  Fan-heavy polls at Box Office Mojo peg the film with a 53.7% vote for “Opening Weekend” and 26.6% “Sometime in Theaters”.  By comparison, Clash opened one year ago to $61 million with 50%/25% respectively and The Incredible Hulk opened to $55 million with 46%/24% — translating into about $67 million with inflation and 3D added in.  Neither of these figure in a fragile market and a $30 million+ holdover going after the same audience with solid word of mouth already established.  A sub-$60 million opening won’t surprise me at all, but I’m running with the numbers here and saying it will just scoot by.

Mother’s Day weekend will result in some very good Sunday holds, especially for family-friendly films.  The second weekend of May isn’t known for producing hits so it’ll be interesting to see if a weak-but-recovering market place can support back-to-back big openers yet (especially considering it took this long just to get one single $50 million opener in 2011).

Something Borrowed and Jumping the Broom target the female audience on this holiday weekend, however, their similar themes mean a huge potential for audience crossover which may cannibalize both of them.  Look for both to sit within that $8-10 million range (though lower wouldn’t surprise me after last weekend’s shockingly low openers), though Jumping the Broom may have a bit more to worry about.
Fast Five‘s positive word of mouth should help maintain a decent hold but I can’t help but worry I’m still being a bit optimistic.  I still this ending around $190-195 million, so its hard to expect a drop similar to the last film’s when this one faces a probable $50 million opener on its second weekend.  I’m expecting IMAX to soften that a bit, plus the fact that this one has a holiday that benefits the weekend rather hurts it (as was the case with Easter landing on the last film’s second Sunday).
What do you think?

Coming later on today (Friday), as promised, my final gut check on the summer as a whole: Top 15 Summer Box Office Predictions!  A few numbers may surprise… (And don’t worry, it’ll be a lot shorter reading than the full-on Preview.)