Notwithstanding the best attempts of some to smear Wall-E as being somehow hypocritical or disdainful of consumers, the little robot gave Pixar the third-best opening weekend in its history, behind The Incredibles and Finding Nemo (and roughly tied with Monsters, Inc.). Its $62.5 million take was on par with expectations, though the lack of the usual family film Saturday and Sunday bump suggests that Wall-E attracted an impressive number of kidless Friday night moviegoers. And that bodes well for the weeks to come: the movie is quite sophisticated and not all that toddler-friendly, so word-of-mouth among adults will be key.

Given Wall-E's apparent cross-demographic appeal, one might have expected Wanted to struggle a bit as the weekend's "adult counterprogramming," but nothing doing: at $51.1 million and a strong second place, we may have a new franchise on our hands. The two combined to make this the strongest three-day weekend of the summer at the box-office overall; in fact, to find a higher combined top 12 gross, we have to go back to Memorial Day 2007 and the debut of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

The rest of the chart looks unremarkable. The Love Guru dropped almost 61% to 6th place, prompting the unsurprising conclusion that the Guru Pitka didn't connect with summer audiences. The Incredible Hulk continues to run behind Hulk, ruling out the possibility that it will have the staying power to do appreciably better than the embattled 2004 film. Wall-E gave Kung Fu Panda its first significant hit, dropping it to 4th place. Indiana Jones will break $300 million by the end of Monday, if Sunday's final numbers don't push it past the milestone. And The Happening looks like it will top out around $70 million.

The full numbers after the jump.

Both of last week's new releases dropped like a rock to make room for Warner Bros.' Get Smart, which landed smack in the middle of expectations with a nice $39.2 million bow. As many people guessed, toxic word-of-mouth on The Happening led to a steep drop -- 67% -- and a fifth place, $10 million finish for the Shyamalan thriller. The $50.3 million cume is far from an embarrassment, but the descent is hopefully a signal to the filmmaker that he needs to, if not go back to the drawing board, at least steal a glance at it.

Slightly more surprising is the 61% drop for The Incredible Hulk, which finished third with $21.6 million. That's a measurable improvement on the 69.7% hit that Ang Lee's Hulk took in 2003, but the new film is still running behind the old one, and its lack of legs in a summer where big movies (Iron Man, Indiana Jones) have held up admirably might be an indication that the "less arty" reboot didn't solve the problem with the franchise, whatever that may be.

I can't bring myself to type that headline; I'm sorry. First of all, every other movie website has used it already, and it wasn't that clever to begin with. Second, it's not really true: The Incredible Hulk did have a solid $54.5 million first-place finish, but it was The Happening -- which Hulk is supposed to have "smashed" -- that really exceeded expectations, cheerfully sitting in third place with $30.5 million. That's M. Night Shyamalan's third-best opening weekend ever, and the equivalent of the director holding up a sign reading "Not Dead Yet." If the annoyed groans I heard when the credits rolled at my opening night showing are any indication, word-of-mouth won't be good, so I wouldn't expect the film to approach the $100 million mark.

The opening for The Incredible Hulk is about right. Ang Lee's "artsy" Hulk opened to $62 million back in 2003, and maybe the "reboot" is to blame for the Hulk-to-Hulk decrease. But by all accounts, this version should be more appealing to the masses, and so should do well in the weeks ahead. In other news, Iron Man should cross the $300 million mark in the next few days, ahead of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The weekend numbers after the jump.

Well, my defense of M. Night Shyamalan certainly struck a nerve last week. The thread generated the expected disagreements and the occasional vaguely racist mocking of the man's last name but it also, as a commenter pointed out, served as a sort of support group for the strong minority who admire his recent work. There was enough interest in the conversation that I thought I'd follow up by offering this space to discuss this weekend's The Happening, which looks headed for a respectable $30 million-ish opening despite predictably middling reviews.

Our James Rocchi liked the movie, and I offer my abbreviated thoughts after the jump. If you haven't seen it, beware of spoilers.

In the Hollywood variation on a classic proverb, whom the gods would destroy they first make successful. So it's been for writer director M. Night Shyamalan, where the breakout success of The Sixth Sense first suggested he could do no wrong and then his later films suggested, in dribs and drabs, that he in fact could. The minor missteps in the otherwise-watchable Unbreakable, Signs and The Village were one thing; eventually, Shyamalan's status as a unquestionable talent culminated in Lady in the Water, a textbook example of what can happen when a filmmaker becomes so used to proceeding without supervision that they go right off the steep cliffs of self-indulgence with a full head of steam.

However, it seemed that even M. Night knew this, and looked to be retrenching with The Happening, promising us R-rated chills and thrills and goosebumps. And after actually seeing The Happening, it has to be said that the film's a perfectly fine summertime chiller, one that avoids the excesses and errors in judgment that unmade Lady in the Water but also one without the vision and excellence of The Sixth Sense. It's not that The Happening is bad, as such -- although there are a few fairly off moments in it -- it's more that I found myself wishing, on more than one occasion, that Shyamalan could forget about plucking the audience's heartstrings and instead just keep going for the jugular. I wanted The Happening's tension at a higher pitch so that I wasn't puzzling over plot holes and questionable character decisions while actually sitting in the theater; The Happening simmers when you want it to boil, smolders when you want it to burn.

The animated family film Kung Fu Panda proved to be the favorite last week, though the Adam Sandler comedy You Don't Mess With the Zohan didn't do too shabby either. The two films led the way for the second biggest June weekend in box office history.

1. Kung Fu Panda: $60.2 million
2. You Don't Mess with the Zohan: $38.5 million
3. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: $22.7 million
4. Sex and the City: $21.2 million
5. The Strangers: $8.9 million

Two huge releases this week, each of which represents a comeback of sorts.

The Incredible Hulk
What's It All About: In the wake of Ang Lee's not so well received 2003 The Hulk, the franchise gets a reboot and the character gets back the adjective that all the 60s Marvel characters had (The Uncanny X-Men, The Amazing Spider-man, etc.). Edward Norton plays the over-irradiated Dr. Bruce Banner who, when angered, turns green around the gills and starts throwing tanks around. He is being pursued by the military which is led by General "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt) and he does battle with another gamma powered mutation called The Abomination (Tim Roth).
Why It Might Do Well: There appears to be more action in this Hulk movie than the last, and as Iron Man proved not that long ago, an exciting, well produced comic book movie can be a license to print money.
Why It Might Not Do Well: While this is a more satisfyingly ferocious looking Hulk, the fact that he's a CGI creation (albeit a pretty good one) is obvious to the point of distraction. Will audiences be able to get past this?
Number of Theaters: 3,400
Prediction: $65 million

He goes by "Night," but it's hard to dispute his sunny disposition. Just a few minutes into a conversation with M. Night Shyamalan in a New York City hotel room yesterday, it was obvious to me that the director has managed to occupy such a unique niche in the Hollywood landscape because he's immediately likable. Of course, a little movie released in 1999 called The Sixth Sense didn't hurt, either.

After landing two Oscar nominations and international acclaim for his masterful ghost story, Shyamalan continued to market himself as a brand. Since then, the results have been mixed. Signs was an indisputable hit. Unbreakable has its supporters. Lady in the Water? Not so much. But that failure hasn't prevented the filmmaker from dealing with audacious material: His latest movie, The Happening, finds a married couple (Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel) thrust into a world where people inexplicably become suicidal after getting struck by an ominous, unseen toxin. Forces of evil usually remain unseen in Shyamalan's films, and The Happening is no exception to that rule. I spoke to the 37-year-old Philadelphia resident about the personal philosophies guiding his career choices, the polarized reactions to his work, and what the future will bring.

When it comes to seeing M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening early, the best that Fox publicists can offer me (and other non-daily-newspaper press in Philadelphia) is a 9 pm screening at an inconvenient theater the night before release. I'm going to politely decline, and it's probably just as well. It's become so hip to hate and sneer at Shyamalan and his films that I'm not sure I could handle the pre- and post-screening small talk. I'll see the film on Friday afternoon, alone, or with a friend who's not privy to the buzz and the gossip.

Those who've read my stuff, here and elsewhere, know that I'm one of the more persistent Shyamalan apologists on the intertubes. I won't launch into a defense of specific films here; that's too formidable a task for a Fan Rant. Instead, I want to briefly discuss why I think it's wrong to make the filmmaker into either a laughingstock or public enemy #1, even if you're not enamored of his recent efforts.

The summer weekends are about to get a whole lot more competitive starting this Friday with the debut of two pretty big flicks, The Incredible Hulk and The Happening. On one hand, you have the return of a character who didn't do so well last time he was in theaters. On the other, you have the return of a writer-director who didn't do so well last time he was in theaters. Thus, both men (or monsters) are looking for a bit of redemption this time around. But who will get your money, that's what we're interested in finding out this week. Who will you be giving a second chance to? The Incredible Hulk or The Incredible M. Night Shyamalan?

The Happening marks M. Night's first R-rated feature, which means the film's audience is already somewhat limited. Meanwhile, The Incredible Hulk (rated PG-13) has already started using the success of Marvel's Iron Man to help launch its opening weekend at the box office. That said, I think it's pretty obvious as to which film will make more money than the other, so instead of going down that road, tell us which one you'll be seeing and why. Or, perhaps, you're not interested in either one? Sound off below ...

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.