TheHollywoodReporter The surprise is Water for Elephants -- starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson and Christoph Waltz -- which is overperforming in early business at the domestic box office.

(...)Heading into the weekend, Fox 2000's Water for Elephants was projected to post an opening weekend gross of between $13 million to $15 million.

Water, based on the bestselling book by Sara Gruen, has been gaining momentum in recent days, particularly among younger females, and has every chance now of doing more business. The film's strongest demo, according to tracking, is older women. via RPLife

Deadline Water for Elephants is #3 on Friday with $7M
FRIDAY 6:30 PM: (No Easter Weekend estimates yet.) Twentieth Century Fox's Rio may be about a bird, but very early numbers show "it's holding like a rock," a studio exec just emailed me. Lionsgate's latest in Tyler Perry's franchise, Madea's Big Happy Family, looks soft. This is, after all, Perry's sixth cross-dressing film; the last one opened to $41M and the one before was $30M. But overperforming is Fox's intriguing for adults and Robert Pattinson's Twi-hards Water For Elephants based on Sara Gruen's best-selling book and written by Richard LaGravenese and directed by Francis Lawrence. "Terrific start for Elephants as we could hit higher teens," a Fox exec tells me.  So it's not a bad Good Friday in more ways than one!
Refined numbers and full analysis coming later. Here are Top 5:

1. Rio 3D (Blue Sky Studio/Fox) Week 2
Friday $11M
2. Madea's Big Happy Family (Tyler Perry Studio/Lionsgate) NEW
Friday $10M
3. Water For Elephants (Fox 2000/Fox) NEW
Friday $7M
4. Hop (Illumination Entertainment/Universal) Week 4 [3,616 Theaters]
Friday $5.5M
5. African Cats (Disneynature/Walt Disney Studios) NEW [1,220 Theaters]
Friday $3M
6. Scream 4 (Miramax/Dimension/Weinstein Co) Week 2 [3,314 Theaters]
Friday $3M
RPLife