Weekend Receipts: Rio Soars To First Again, Narrowly Above Madea's Big Happy Family

The brightly-plumaged birds of paradise edged out the mad black woman as Rio took the top spot again, with Madea's Big Happy Family following close behind at number two. The olde-timey circus of R. Pattz and Reese Witherspoon's Water For Elephants pulled into number three while the wild tabbies of African Cats settled into sixth place. Your weekend receipts are here.

1. Rio

Gross: $26,800,000 ($81,261,000)

Screens: 3,842 (PSA: $6,976)

Weeks: 2 (change: -31.7%)

A nice second weekend showing for the birdies, but there's a very clear pattern for the top spot emerging. Between this, Hop and Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2, the last time a non kids/family movie was on top was March 18th, with Bradley Cooper's unctuous Limitless. I think I just heard a cavalcade of talking animal movies being greenlit.

2. Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family

Gross: $25,750,000 (new)

Screens: 2,288 (PSA: $11,254)

Weeks: 1

A slightly lower opening weekend for Madea considering her past opening weekends, but she still managed the highest per screen average by far. And lest we get too sad for Tyler Perry, let me share this nugget from the Madea press conference: Perry was talking about "a little place" he just bought in the Bahamas to unwind. To which Tamela Mann interjected, "Little? It's a whole island!" Perry shot her a daggered look and there was an awkward silence before everything began again. So don't worry about Tyler Perry: brother owns an island.

3. Water For Elephants

Gross: $17,500,000 (new)

Screens: 2,817 (PSA: $6,212)

Weeks: 1

I'm not the only out there who writes Like Water For Elephants like every single time I mean to write the title to this one, right?

4. Hop

Gross: $12,461,000 ($100,500,000)

Screens:3,616 (PSA: $3,446)

Weeks: 2 (change: +16.3%)

A nice little Easter bounce for the bunny this weekend. Now let it disappear to DVD so we can get a nice animated Bastille Day tie-in movie -- it'll feature a talking guillotine and be called Chop.

5. Scream 4

Gross: $7,154,000 ($31,158,000)

Screens: 3,314 (PSA: $2,159)

Weeks: 2 (change: -61.7%)

Damn, girl. Whatever you might think of the ending, it looks like most people aren't cottoning to the latest Scream entry. I'd have to guess that the chances of another sequel [puts on sunglasses] ... just got stabbed [YEAAAHHHHHHH].

6. African Cats

Gross: $6,400,000 (new)

Screens:1220 (PSA: $5,246)

Weeks: 1

What country are you from?

Meow?

"Meow" ain't no country I've ever heard of. They speak English in Meow?

Meow?

English, motherf*cker, do you speak it?

Meow!

Say "meow" again. Say "meow" again, I dare you, I double dare you motherf*cker, say "meow" one more goddamn time!

[Numbers via Box Office Mojo]