Weekend Box Office: 'Panda' Beats Up 'Zohan'

That's a bit misleading there, in the title; Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess with the Zohan wasn't able to claim the weekend's top spot over Dreamworks Animation's Kung Fu Panda, but a) no one was really expecting it to do that, and b) Zohan's $40 million opening weekend is at least par for Sandler, roughly tying Click's opening weekend, and beating I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry by a handy $6 million. Sandler has only done measurably better with The Longest Yard, Anger Management and Big Daddy.

Panda, meanwhile, is an unadulterated victory. Its $60 million weekend beats everything in the Dreamworks Animation canon except the two Shrek sequels, and wouldn't have been a disappointment for any Pixar film. Good reviews and a witty, appealing ad campaign certainly helped, though I was kind of hoping that airing that insufferable Jack Black "silence is golden" intro in AMC theaters for the past, oh, eight months, would have backfired.

The 62% drop for Sex and the City shouldn't surprise anyone, though the folks at New Line/Warners probably had a reasonable hope of a bit more staying power. The 55% drop for The Strangers isn't too horrendous, and the $38 million cume on the micro-budgeted horror flick is a big win for Rogue regardless. Cinematical darling The Promotion debuted on 6 screens to a respectable but unspectacular $28,900 ($4,816 per screen).

Check out the top 10, and a look forward to next week, after the jump.

1 - Kung Fu Panda (Dreamworks Animation) - $60.00 ($14,584) - $60.00
2 - You Don't Mess with the Zohan (Sony) - $40.00 ($11,554) - $40.00
3 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Paramount) - $22.81 ($5,442) - $253.03
4 - Sex and the City (New Line) - $21.31 ($6,409) - $99.27
5 - The Strangers (Rogue) - $9.29 ($3,750) - $37.65
6 - Iron Man (Paramount) - $7.52 ($2,566) - $288.89
7 - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Disney) - $5.53 ($1,803) - $125.85
8 - What Happens in Vegas (Fox) - $3.40 ($1,437) - $72.23
9 - Baby Mama (Universal) - $0.78 ($844) - $57.90
10 - Made of Honor (Sony) - $0.78 ($1,047) - $44.66

Numbers from the ever-splendiferous Box Office Mojo.

Barring catastrophe, The Incredible Hulk should be able to capitalize on the brand and good buzz to debut strongly. The marketplace is reeling from a bunch of huge weekends in a row, but $50+ million is not out of the question for Hulk. The real question mark is The Happening. As an unapologetic M. Night Shyamalan fan, I'm rooting for it, but early buzz (based, as far as I can tell, mostly on a couple of test screening reviews) has not been good. I think it might depend on the reviews. Universal pans might doom it to $12 or 15 million, while a critical rebound could boost it to circa $25.