Inception opens with $60.4 million weekend

Bringing out the big guns. Ur doin’ it right. According to Deadline‘s early sources. Those numbers should be strong enough to make it the 5th highest opening of 2010. The 3rd highest non-3D opening (right behind Twilight Eclipse at $64 mil). And — as long as we’re slicing and dicing with the Ronco Miracle Blade — might as well parse it one more way and note that Inception is the #1 non-sequel, non-remake, original, made-from-scratch movie of the year.

Inception’s closest recent parallel would be Shutter Island, which opened to $42 million and has gone on to earn $294 mil worldwide. Every weekends box-office tally isn’t news here, because frankly the fact that The Karate Kid had a $55 mil premiere doesn’t earn status points in the eyes of anybody except the producers and studio. But obviously it’s important that a movie with more lofty ambition receive checklist validation from as many yardsticks as possible. A film as unique as Inception can’t sail through awards season on the strength of popularity alone, but mediocre numbers could have sunk it. Box-office this strong is powerful enough to break any anchor chains that might have weighed it down with a mediocre showing. What $62 million means for now is that the top continues to spin.