Stallone and his pumped-up pals lifted Lionsgate’s 1980s-style action romp “The Expendables”

Stallone and his pumped-up pals lifted Lionsgate’s 1980s-style action romp “The Expendables” to a No. 1 debut with $35 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

While the macho “Expendables” lured male audiences, Julia Roberts delivered a crowd-pleaser for women with Sony’s “Eat Pray Love,” which opened at No. 2 with $23.7 million.

“By combining all that star power, they really had a strong debut,” said Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. “Maybe star power doesn’t work with just one star, but when you throw in a dozen, it really looked fun. In the action world, these guys are big names.”

Adapted from Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir, “Eat Pray Love” stars Julia Roberts as a woman traveling the world in search of enlightenment after her divorce.

Lionsgate deliberately chose this weekend to open “The Expendables” since it would be aiming for a different audience than “Eat Pray Love.”

“We figured anybody going to see ‘Eat Pray Love’ would not want to see ‘Expendables,’ and vice versa,” said David Spitz, head of distribution at Lionsgate.

via yahoo.com