By Scott Mendelson HollywoodNews.com: ‘The Expendables’ was number one in its first day of release, taking in $13.3 million. The Sly Stallone and friends ensemble looks heading for an opening weekend of around $35 million. Although the picture cost $82 million, distributor Lionsgate is only on the hook for a $20 million distribution fee and a chunk of the (likely abundant) marketing costs. This is a massive win for the beleaguered House that Jigsaw Built, as Lionsgate absolutely had to open this above their $23 million peak if they wanted to prove they could play in the big leagues. As I’ve written any number of times, if you take away the ‘Saw’ sequels and the Tyler Perry pictures, the studio’s biggest opening weekend was ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ with $23.9 million and ‘The Haunting In Connecticut’ with $23 million. Be it ‘Rambo’ ($18.2 million), ‘Kick As’s ($19.8 million), ’3:10 to Yuma’ ($14 million), or ‘Killers’ ($15.8 million), Lionsgate has had a problem opening seemingly break-out pictures above their $15-19 million ceiling. At $13.3 million, the ode to 80s action nostalgia easily scored the studio’s biggest non-Saw/non-Madea opening day of all time. ‘The Expendables’ scored Lionsgates’s fifth-biggest single day gross ever. It also doubled the opening day of Stallone’s ‘Rambo’ ($6.6 million), very nearly doubles the opening day take of ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ ($7.7 million), and trounced the $3 million-ish opening days of ‘War,’ ‘Gamer,’ and the ‘Crank’ pictures. If the film can surpass the $33.6 million opening of ‘Saw III by Sunday’ (a reasonable 2.53x weekend multiplier), it can lay claim to Lionsgate’s second-biggest opening weekend ever, behind the $40 million haul of ‘Madea Goes to Jail’. If it can top the $33.4 (2.52x) million opening of ‘Spy Kids 3D: Game Over,’ it will be Sylvester Stallone’s biggest opening weekend ever (although Stallone was scoring $20 million weekends in the pre-Batman 1980s, when only ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Star Wars’ achieved such feats). Not to be outdone, Sony and Julia Roberts scored a big win with ‘Eat Pray Love.’ Opening with $8.5 million, the film looks to end the weekend with just over $25 million. This was a crucial test for Roberts, as it was the third film of her return to movies (it’s not a comeback, as she simply chose to take time off). The first outing was ‘Duplicity,’ which was unfairly tagged as a flop for opening with $13.9 million and ending [...]