The biggest movie star in the world has another July 4th notch in his belt. His fourth huge Independence Day release (fifth if you count Wild Wild West, which came out June 30th) is also his biggest: the outrageously underappreciated Hancock had a $66 million 3-day weekend, and $107 million over the five-and-a-half days from Tuesday night through Sunday. It's the third-best 3-day of the year, behind only Iron Man and Indiana Jones. The figure is skewed since the movie came out on Tuesday and Friday was a national holiday, but that's the stat.

The wide release of the critically acclaimed Kit Kittredge: An American Girl didn't go over too well: the movie took in $3.6 million on over 1800 screens. Not too surprising given its extremely narrow target demographic, but I was expecting it to expand a little bit stronger.

Wall-E took a pretty harsh 47% hit in its second weekend -- 30-40% has been more standard for recent Pixar releases -- but its $128 million cume is nothing to cry about. Wanted had it even worse after last week's surprisingly robust debut, dropping 60% to $20.6 million for the weekend and $91 million total. And no one wants to see The Love Guru, which dropped out of the top 10 in its third week and won't make it to $40 million.

The full 3-day top 10 after the jump.

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.

Welcome to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game that's so much more dope than it is wacked. Last week, we asked you to bend down, lean forward and give us your best captions for a photo from The Love Guru. I don't know if you all brought in your own Caption Gurus (or if there was some other mystical power at work), but we received some of the most awesomest captions yet. Good job!

1. "This is hard to say, but the reason I called the four of you in to my office is to let you know that you are being downsized." -- Anthony G.

2. "We're sorry, we thought this was a shrink's office." -- Kurt P.

3. "Honey, I shrunk the agent." -- Suraj C.

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This week, you're gonna have to bring out those mad skillz for a movie that's hotter than a McSkillet, ya dig? (What does that even mean?) Yup, we're shellin' out some lovin' for a little indie called The Wackness, featuring mad rhymes, dope flava ... Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen and Ben Kingsley. Holla! But check it: One grand prize winner will take away a ridiculous Sony DVP-FX820 portable DVD player. Word. Seriously, though, The Wackness is a blast -- great soundtrack, fun movie, take your friends, the whole nine. Flick hits theaters on July 3. Sound off punks!



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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.

Welcome back to another edition of Insert Caption -- the game where you don't have to be a guru in order to win fabulous movie-related prizes. Last week, we asked you to point, laugh and get your caption on with a photo of two heads (belonging to Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway) from the film Get Smart. And that you did! Congrats go out to David R. for turning us on and off in the same sentence.


1. "That better be your shoe-phone, Max." -- David R.

2. "Um, I think we are just about in over our heads." -- Cherlyn

3. "I told you the Marie Antoinette spa treatment was a bad idea!!" -- Tim

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This week, we're searching for a little love (and advice) from Guru Pitka (Mike Myers) in The Love Guru. Our old friend returns to live-action comedy with this flick about a self-help guru who travels from India to the states to help a star hockey player whose wife left him for a rival athlete. Sound familiar? Have you found yourself in a similar romantic squabble as of late? And are you seeking advice from all the wrong people (like that guy with the wooden leg who keeps asking to square off against you in a game of naked Twister)? Well, look no further my fellow caption-ers, because the three winners from this week will prance away with one The Love Guru Guru Pitka magic 8- ball action figure (pictured right, click to enlarge). This way, next time trouble comes knocking at your heart, you'll have your own personal guru to help steer you in the right direction. Sound off below ...



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If you don't count his vocal work in the Shrek films, The Love Guru marks the return of Mike Myers to the big screen after a five-year absence. Last seen in 2003's The Cat in the Hat, Myers is now unveiling -- or is that unleashing? -- a new character, Guru Pitka, a self-help maven who brings the spiritual teachings he learned from Guru Tugginmypudha (Ben Kingsley) in India to America. Much like Austin Powers, Guru Pitka gives Myers an opportunity to play to what he thinks of as his strengths, giving us an outlandish-looking character with a thick accent and a fish-out-of-water back story. The problem is that Pitka's entirely too much like Austin Powers -- not a character, but instead a series of catchphrases, makeup appliances and goofy mannerisms that lets Meyers indulge in his penchant for sex gags, bodily-function gags and constant, self-satisfied glances at the camera.

Any time you review a film like this negatively, people ask "Why can't you just enjoy a few laughs?" And I can't give a simple answer to that, but I think it comes down to the fact that I can't just enjoy a few laughs if they're surrounded by a much larger chaotic mass of things that aren't funny. So it is with The Love Guru, as Pitka's brought to Toronto to help Jane Bullard (Jessica Alba), the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, get her broken-hearted star player Darren Roanoke (Romany Malco) over his girlfriend Prudence (Megan Good) leaving him for L.A. Kings goalie Jacques "Le Coq" Grande (Justin Timberlake) so that the Leafs might win the Stanley Cup. The occasional funny bit is drowned out by the mass and might of Meyers's self-indulgent eagerness to wallow in his obsessions -- poop, accents, naughty talk, makeup and innuendo.

I caught a screening of Hancock last night. We still have a couple weeks to go before we get to that film, but I am very curious to hear what you folks think of this flick. It's certainly ballsy (especially for a Fourth of July weekend), and I loved that about it -- so we'll see. My mouth shall remain shut for now. That said, this weekend is a peculiar one because we have two comedies competing against one another. Sure, one (Get Smart) could probably pass itself off as an action-comedy, but it will be fascinating to watch the old school (Mike Myers) go up against the new school (Steve Carell).

On paper (and from what I've been hearing), Get Smart seems like the better all-around choice if you only have cash for one film and want a taste of typical, popcorn summer entertainment. Then again, Mike Myers hasn't starred in a live-action film since 2003's The Cat and the Hat, and so fans might be itching for that familiar Myers absurdity (with a twist of Mini Me thrown in for extra punch). If you choose your films based on the female factor, well, Get Smart gives us the beautiful Anne Hathaway, while The Love Guru features the equally-as-beautiful Jessica Alba. My opinion: Hathaway's the better actress, but Alba's the fan favorite. As far as directors go, Love Guru gives us a first-timer, and Get Smart is brought to us by the guy behind films like Tommy Boy, Anger Management and 50 First Dates.

So, based on my shoddy analysis, which film will you be seeing this weekend?

I really, really love movie trailers, yet for some reason I can't stand movie commercials on television. Maybe it's because they're repeated over and over and over again, like the current spot for The Love Guru, which has been driving me nuts all week. I hardly even watch TV (with no more Lost til 2009, there's nothing good on) and yet I believe I've seen it about a thousand times over the past few days.

Apparently I'm in the minority, however, because TiVo has just released data showing that ads for movies are one of the few kinds of commercials that its subscribers actually watch rather than fast-forward through. The DVR company also revealed the movie that had the least-fast-forwarded spot: Forgetting Sarah Marshall. A single FSM ad that ran during an episode of The Office was the single-most popular (or, at least most-viewed) for the month of April. Second least-fast-forwarded in that month was a spot for Hancock. Also considered "DVR-resistant" are those amusing Mac vs. PC commercials, while an ad for Ford that ran during an episode of American Idol placed high for April, as well.

The Incredible Hulk took first place last weekend, but notably pulled in about $6.5 million less than Ang Lee's 2004 Hulk. M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening took third but still exceeded expectations. Here's last weekend's top five:

1. The Incredible Hulk: $55.4 million
2. Kung Fu Panda: $33.6 million
3. The Happening: $30.5 million
4. You Don't Mess with the Zohan: $16.4 million
5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: $14.7 million

Both of this week's new releases are comedies, putting them in direct competition with one another, so this should be interesting.

Get Smart
What's It All About: Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway star in this adaptation of the classic 60's spy comedy. Carell is Maxwell Smart, an eager but inexperienced analyst for an espionage agency called CONTROL. Max is suddenly promoted to field agent when the evil organization KAOS learns the identity of nearly every Control agent in the world, and he is teamed with the lovely agent 99 played by Hathaway.
Why It Might Do Well: There's nostalgia appeal at work here, plus Steve Carell's presence will stir up memories of hits like The 40 Year Old Virgin and he's still got plenty of fans from NBC's The Office.
Why It Might Not Do Well: How well a spy caper created during the Cold War translates to the 21st century remains to be seen. Also, the 58% rating at rottentomatoes.com isn't thrilling me.
Number of Theaters: 3,700
Prediction: $40 million

Over the weekend, Paramount Pictures International went over the $1 billion mark, reportedly thanks to the success of its distribution of summer blockbusters Iron Man ($210 million), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($350 million) and Kung Fu Panda ($41 million), as well as earlier releases The Spiderwick Chronicles ($91 million), Cloverfield ($90 million) and No Country for Old Men ($86 million). Paramount is the first studio to reach a billion bucks in international grosses this year, and it did so faster than in 2007, when it didn't top the figure until late July.

But is it really fair for Paramount to be bragging so much? On her Variety blog, Anne Thompson weighs in on the news, pointing out that all three of the studio's summer blockbusters were produced outside the main studio. Indiana Jones was Lucasfilm; Iron Man was Marvel; Panda was DreamWorks Animation. Of course, Paramount deserves a lot of credit for the marketing of these films, but Thompson wonders what it will be like if DreamWorks really does break away soon. Fortunately it has a good looking slate for the next few years, thanks to next year's toy-based titles Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and G.I. Joe, and then the next four or five Marvel Studios releases in 2010 and 2011.