As expected, Angels & Demons won this weekend’s box office, taking in $48 million – about what we’d anticipated. Star Trek did better than many anticipated, at $43 million (we’d predicted about $40). Wolverine’s $15 million take helped it clear $150 million, but it’s a long shot to top the $200 million mark. One interesting note is that Monsters vs. Aliens $3 million take this weekend puts it at $191 million, and it’ll be a up in the air if it makes $200, but we think it will. Next week sees the opening of two big pics – Terminator Salvation and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Here’s this week’s top 10.

Angels & Demons – $48M – $48M
Star Trek – $43M – $148M
X-Men Origins: Wolverine – $14.8M – $151M
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past – $6.86M – $40.1M
Obsessed – $4.55M – $62.6M
17 Again – $3.4M – $58.4M
Monsters vs Aliens – $3M – $191M
The Soloist – $2.42M – $27.5M
Next Day Air – $2.28M – $7.65M
Earth – $1.68M – $29.1M

Angels & Demons is this week’s list of new films. Nothing else opens wide. Angels will rule the roost, unless Star Trek kicks ass in the repeat viewers category. The oft-delayed Brothers Bloom, which has a nice cast with Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo, gets a limited release, along with Jen Aniston’s Management.

Watch for Angels to take in around $50 million – the film has solid early reviews and the only new gig in town. Star Trek will come in second – around $40 million. Wolverine will be third, generating $10-15 million.

New this week:

Angels & Demons
This film a lackluster early trailer, but previews have given it decent reviews (certainly better than the Da Vinci Code). The action is picked up, and even the Vatican has deemed the film much-ado-about-nothing with regards to its treatment of the Catholic Church. The film takes place as a sequel to the Da Vinci Code, even though the original book came before it. Watch for good worldwide reception to the film as well.

A few early reviews, including the one below, are coming in on Angels & Demons, the sequel to the Da Vinci Code. The film is (thankfully) faster-paced and more thrilling (important for a thriller!).

Science or religion? Wait, there’s room for both. If the world could be rendered as simple as “Angels & Demons,” we’d all be living in a less confusing place. Taking to heart the critics’ lament that the first Dan Brown novel-to-film “The Da Vinci Code” was talky, static and arcane, director Ron Howard and his crew have worked hard to make Professor Robert Langdon’s return a thrilling, faster-paced walk in the park. It will be difficult for this papal mystery, beautifully shot in Rome and Rome-like locations, to gross less than its phenomenal predecessor, which topped $750 million worldwide for Sony Pictures in 2006. Plucking the same violent, occult strings as “Da Vinci” while avoiding its leadenness, “Angels” keeps the action coming for the best part of 139 minutes. Scripters David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman have taken a firmer hand with Brown’s material. The opening scene, for example, omits the hypersonic Vatican jet that transports crack Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) from Cambridge to Geneva in an hour, opting for more conventional means to get him to Rome and into the thick of the action. – From The Hollywood Reporter

Director Ron Howard claimed Sunday that the Vatican interfered with efforts to get permits to shoot certain scenes of his “Angels & Demons” religious thriller in Rome – a charge the Vatican said was purely a publicity stunt. The film, which stars Tom Hanks and is based on the best-selling novel by Dan Brown, has its world premiere Monday in Rome. “Angels & Demons” combines an ancient secret brotherhood called the Illuminati, a papal conclave and a high-tech weapon threatening to destroy the Vatican. At a press conference Sunday, Howard said he hadn’t sought cooperation from the Vatican based on the opposition he encountered filming “The Da Vinci Code,” another Brown novel that angered many Catholic leaders. But he said the Vatican nevertheless exerted influence regarding his filming permits, and he was told it would not be possible even to shoot scenes in Rome that had churches in the background. – From AP