Weekend Box Office: 'Hellboy' Beats 'Hancock'; Eddie Murphy Relives 'Pluto Nash'

I guess Eddie Murphy knew something we didn't. I don't know how much the star showing up for the premiere of his own movie would have helped matters, but it couldn't have hurt. The poorly (though not abysmally) reviewed Meet Dave somehow turned out to be Murphy's worst debut weekend grosser since 2002's legendarily bad The Adventures of Pluto Nash, and before that 1998's Holy Man. Actually, Meet Dave's $5.3 million take just barely edged out Holy Man's opening. And that's pretty impressive. I probably shouldn't be too surprised, since even I didn't bother watching the thing, and I see just about everything. Bigger and better-looking films have at the moment cornered every demographic that Dave could have aimed for.

Better news for Hellboy II: The Golden Army, whose $35.9 million bow won't set any records this summer, but is a solid improvement on Hellboy's $23 million opening (it would go on to gross $60 million) and good enough for first. On the other hand, Journey to the Center of the Earth's $20.6 million, 3rd place finish has to be considered a mixed success. $11.7 million of that came from the film's 857 3-D locations (significantly less than a third of its total sites). That's not surprising, considering how much the movie was marketed as a 3-D affair; I wonder how many people went in thinking they were going to watch it in 3-D and went home disappointed. (Not receiving a pair of 3-D glasses would have tipped them off, I suppose.)

Nothing remarkable going on among the holdovers this week. Hancock dropped 47% in its second weekend and is sitting pretty with a $165 million cume (though recall that it was released two Tuesdays ago). Wall-E lost another 42% and, at $162.7 million after three weeks, it's tracking behind The Incredibles and Finding Nemo, but ahead of every other Pixar offering.

The full top 10 after the jump!
1 - Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Universal) - $35.89 ($11,200) - $35.89
2 - Hancock (Columbia) - $33.00 ($8,322) - $165.03
3 - Journey to the Center of the Earth (New Line) - $20.58 ($7,321) - $20.58
4 - Wall-E (Disney) - $18.51 ($4,808) - $162.78
5 - Wanted (Universal) - $11.59 ($3,669) - $112.05
6 - Get Smart (Warner Bros.) - $7.11 ($2,302) - $111.47
7 - Meet Dave (Fox) - $5.30 ($1,760) - $5.30
8 - Kung Fu Panda (Dreamworks Animation) - $4.30 ($1,590) - $202.04
9 - Kit Kittredge: An American Girl (Picturehouse) - $2.36 ($1,274) - $11.05
10 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Paramount) - $2.25 ($1,352) - $310.48

I genuflect before the awesomeness of Box Office Mojo, which had the numbers.

Next week, the ABBA musical Mamma Mia! faces off against Space Chimps. I think Mamma Mia! will surprise some people, and I am tempted to say that Space Chimps hasn't really been advertised much, but then I don't watch kid TV. What? Oh, and The Dark Knight is opening too.