You just can't stop News Corp.'s (NWS) Avatar. James Cameron's epic 3D picture grossed $48 million at domestic theaters over the weekend, as of early estimates from Box Office Mojo. This puts the grand total at almost $430 million (worldwide, Avatar has made well over a billion bucks). Amazing for this time of year.

News Corp. is also counting its money from Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, which is ranked in third place at the time of this writing; its total gross now stands at roughly $178 million. Coming in second is Time Warner's (TWX) Sherlock Holmes action adventure. It's possible Holmes and Squeakquel could change places once final numbers are released, since both are credited with similar weekend amounts. Nevertheless, Holmes has now raked in about $165 million.

When I first saw the box-office results for this past weekend, I was of two minds about Disney's (DIS) The Princess and the Frog. As of early estimates at Box Office Mojo, Princess took in $25 million at domestic theaters, good for first place.

That's pretty cool, right? Maybe even more than pretty cool, one would think. It's not an insignificant sum of money. Plus, Princess finished ahead of strong competitors such as Time Warner's (TWX) The Blind Side and Summit Entertainment's The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

Shareholders of Time Warner (TWX) should be pretty happy this week. The media company's new film, The Blind Side, beat the latest Twilight picture. No, it won't make the stock go up, but I'm sure studio execs were excited by the fact that Blind Side held up well during its second weekend out in the marketplace.

According to early estimates over at Box Office Mojo, Blind Side grossed $20 million at domestic theaters while The Twilight Saga: New Moon, distributed by Summit Entertainment, made roughly $15 million. Obviously Time Warner benefited from the satiation of demand on New Moon, which has so far taken in over $250 million.

There was never any question that Summit Entertainment's Twilight Saga: New Moon would be the number one movie this weekend, there was just a question about how much the movie would gross. We now have the answer: a real, real lot.

According to early estimates at Box Office Mojo, New Moon made $140 million at domestic theaters. To put this in perspective, this means that the vampire flick now occupies the third spot on the chart of best opening weekends (behind Dark Knight and Spiderman 3). Truly impressive, especially when you consider that we're not in the summertime.