Don't expect to see any big-budget tentpole movies based on board games soon, as Universal and Hasbro's attempt to turn a simple guessing game into a Transformers-style blockbuster Battleship opened in second place with an estimated $25.3 million.  For a would-be event movie with a budget well over $200 million and an aggressive marketing campaign, that's not a promising start.  The movie, directed by Peter Berg, was expected to open to a figure more like $35 million, and even that would've been disappointing for Universal.

Battleship was aiming at the same audience that's still happily lapping up The Avengers, and the film's concept of an alien invasion at sea felt very familiar, especially given the advertising that deliberately echoed Hasbro's biggest success, the robots-in-disguise movies.  Following March's John Carter, this is the second less-than-outstanding opening for erstwhile Tim Riggins and aspiring movie star Taylor Kitsch.  Still Universal rather unconventionally rolled out Battleship overseas a month ago, and the movie has earned $215.3 million internationally.  That will keep the film from being a full-blown disaster, but that it won't come close to breaking $100 million pretty much ensures those Monopoly and Clue movies aren't happening.

In third place, behind the board game movie, is The Dictator.  The latest incendiary comedy starring Sacha Baron Cohen grossed an estimated $17.4 million over the weekend.  Last month, distributor Paramount shifted the release date from May 11th to midweek, and since Wednesday, The Dictator has earned a $24.4 million total.  That's a smaller debut than Baron Cohen's previous collaborations with director Larry Charles, Borat and Bruno, but by no means the commercial catastrophe some were predicting.  The combination of satire and ludicrousness found in The Dictator, and audiences are fairly split down the middle, as reflected by an overall C CinemaScore rating from attendees.

The other new competition, What to Expect When You're Expecting, sought to capitalize on a demographic typically less interested in alien invasions.  The ensemble comedic drama, another attempt to turn a familiar name into a narrative feature (in this case, Heidi Murkoff's bestselling pregnancy-advice books) opened to an estimate of $10.5 million in fifth place.  That's behind Tim Burton and Johnny Depp's Dark Shadows, which dropped 57% from its debut last weekend. What to Expect When You're Expecting's audience was predominantly women at 70%.  Even targeting an older, lady-centric crowd and with a cast that includes Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, and Elizabeth Banks, the film still came in below expectations, though.

Why?  At least partially because The Avengers still has a hold on the cinematic attention of America.  In its third consecutive weekend at number one, Marvel's big team-up grossed an estimated $55 million.  That's down about 46.6% from the second weekend, a modest decline that's indicative of the almost-unanimously positive word-of-mouth.  The Joss Whedon-scripted and directed blockbuster has now amassed $457 million in just 17 days of release, putting it on track to easily exceed $600 million and possibly $700 million. 

The film has now passed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest as Disney's biggest domestic release ever, and stands at number 6 on the all-time domestic charts (not adjusted for inflation, of course).  Not only that, but the $723.3 million it has brought in internationally means that the global total of The Avengers is at $1.18 billion.  That makes it Disney's biggest movie ever.  Period.

Here's the top ten for the weekend of May 18th through the 20th:

1. The Avengers                                                     $55.0 million        $457.0 million

2. Battleship                                                           $25.3 million         New Release

3. The Dictator                                                        $17.4 million         $24.4 million

4. Dark Shadows                                                     $12.7 million        $50.9 million

5. What to Expect When You're Expecting            $10.5 million         New Release

6. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel                          $3.2 million          $8.2 million

7. The Hunger Games                                              $3.0 million          $391.6 million

8. Think Like a Man                                                 $2.7 million          $85.8 million

9. The Lucky One                                                     $1.7 million         $56.9 million

10. The Pirates! Band of Misfits                              $1.4 million         $25.3 million

The coming Friday sees the wide release of Men in Black 3 and The Chernobyl Diaries, along with a limited release for Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom.