Blades of Glory wins box office gold

Stars-on-ice Will Ferrell and Jon Heder took box office gold for the weekend. Paramount and DreamWorks' Blades of Glory, with Ferrell and Heder playing figure-skating rivals who become the sport's first men's pair, debuted as the weekend's number 1 movie with $33 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Disney's animated adventure Meet the Robinsons, about the time-traveling journey of a brilliant but lonely orphan, debuted in second place with $25.1 million.

The previous weekend's top movie--the Warner Bros. animated tale TMNT, a revival of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle franchise-- slipped to fourth place with $9.2 million, down a steep 62% from its $24.3 million debut. TMNT raised its 10-day total to $38.4 million.

After a month-long surge, overall box office declined. The top 12 movies took in $115 million, down 13% from the same weekend last year, when Ice Age: The Meltdown opened with $68 million.

''This is still a good weekend, a pretty healthy one-two punch with Blades of Glory and Meet the Robinsons at the top,'' said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Media By Numbers.

Movie attendance is up 4% so far this year, Dergarabedian said.

Teaming with Napoleon Dynamite star Heder on Blades of Glory, Ferrell scored the second-best opening of his career, behind last summer's Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, which took in $47 million in its first weekend.

''It starts with a great concept, and the whole picture was cast so well,'' said DreamWorks spokesman Marvin Levy. ''Another part of the surprise was, we got a ton of very, very good reviews.''

Meet the Robinsons played in about 3,400 theaters and did especially well in a 3-D version at 600 cinemas, said Chuck Viane, head of distribution for Disney. The studio did not have a precise breakdown, but cinemas reported that screens playing the 3-D version pulled in about double the grosses of theaters running the regular version, Viane said. (AP)