It was a bit of a middleweight effort from the new releases, but Real Steel claimed the champions belt with $27.3 million.The  Hugh Jackman robot boxing drama was only really up against The Ides Of March, which was on significantly fewer screens. The political thriller starring Ryan Gosling and George Clooney who also directs the film. This marks Clooney’s 4th directorial effort and is in line to take the $35-$45 million final gross that his previous films have made. The exception being Confessions of A Dangerous Mind ($16 million), which ironically has been his best film a director to date.

There wasn’t many new films out in the US last friday, the only other new entry of note was much further down the charts. On a limited release is Emilio Estevez’s The Way, starring his real life father Martin Sheen. The movie tells the story of Tom (Sheen) collecting the remains of his estranged late son (Estevez), who died in a storm whilst walking the Camino de Santiago.

Tom decides to finish his son’s final walk and along the way he meets other travelers and learns about his son and about life, It might sound a little cliched but I saw the film when it was out in the UK and it’s worth a look. It comes to DVD in the UK at the end of the month and we will of course be reviewing it here. Estevez has taken a leaf out of Kevin Smith’s book as on August 27th this year Estevez and Sheen took to the roads and started a 50 date tour of the movie.

The US top 5 looked like this.

1. Real Steal $27.3 million

2. Ides of March $10.5 million

3. Dolphin Tale $9.1 million

4. Moneyball  $7.5 million

5. 50/50 $5.5 million