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From ew, Six weeks ago, The Avengers entered theaters and blew everyone’s expectations out of the water with its record-breaking $207.4 million debut.

In the weeks that followed, though, the box office fell into a bit of a slump. Expensive tentpoles like Battleship and Dark Shadows outright bombed, while major studio fare like What to Expect When You’re Expecting and The Dictator underperformed, and even Men In Black 3‘s number one opening felt weak given its predecessors’ strength.

Last weekend, Snow White and the Hunstman exceeded industry expectations, giving Hollywood hope that summer 2012 might live up to the hype that The Avengers had suggested. This weekend, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted and and Prometheus continued to ease any fears that the box office was in trouble with robust debuts in first and second place, respectively. These hefty starts helped the Top 10 films gross $169.6 million, up a whopping 30 percent over the same weekend in 2011, when Super 8 topped the chart.

Dreamworks $145 million 3-D sequel Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, which features the voice work of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, and David Schwimmer as lost Central Park Zoo animals, handily won the weekend with $60.4 million, 45 percent of which came from 3-D ticket sales. That’s a touch behind 2008′s Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, which started with $63.1 million, despite the fact that Madagascar 3 earned more on its opening day than Escape 2 Africa ($20.5 million vs. $17.5 million). It looks like this threequel may suffer from a slight case of sequelitis, when franchise films become increasingly front-loaded at the box office as the franchise continues.

Read the full report here