Friday box office: "Iron" brings in the box office gold in its first day

Paramount's summer opener "Iron Man 2" landed loudly at the North American box office on Friday with a huge $52.4 million in ticket sales. This amount includes the $7.5 million the sequel grabbed in early showings on Thursday night. Playing on an ultra-wide 4,380 screens (a new record), the movie easily bested the opening day of the 2008 original by approximately $14 million while doing so only only 280 more screens. The well-received film should find its way to roughly the $130-140 million mark for the weekend. Overseas, where the film opened one week earlier, the movie has taken in $140 million so far.

Last week's champ, the remake of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" fell sharply by 80% from its opening day total of $15 million to $3.2 million and a possible weekend haul of $9.5 million, a far cry from its opening weekend take of $32.4 million. Warner Brothers may wish to put those sequel plans on ice until after the weekend.

Come back on Sunday for the weekend box office report.