Film Weekend Per Screen Total
1 Get Smart  $39,155,000 $10,011 $39,155,000
2 Kung Fu Panda $21,700,000 (-35.4%) $5,354 $155,596,000
3 The Incredible Hulk $21,557,000 (-61.1%) $6,145 $96,476,000
4 The Love Guru $14,000,000 $4,648 $14,000,000
5 The Happening $10,000,000 (-67.2%) $3,348 $50,267,000
6 Indiana Jones and the Case of Coors Light $8,414,000 (-42.9%) $2,653 $290,835,000
7 You Don’t Mess with the Zohan $7,200,000 (-56.0%) $2,196 $84,055,000
8 Sex and the City $6,465,000 (-34.0%) $2,647 $132,385,000
9 Iron Man $4,002,000 (-28.8%) $2,093 $304,788,000
10 The Strangers $1,949,000 (-51.6%) $1,235 $49,586,000

 
This just in: Don’t start no shit… won’t be no shit.

In a wrestling match, there are winners and losers, unless there is a tie, but in the case of the comic Grecco-Roman tussle that was Get Smart vs. The Love Guru, Get Smart dominated Guru to the point that it held Guru‘s hand behind his back until Guru said that it was gay and liked to have sex in Amtrak bathroom stalls with strangers. That, not being enough for Get Smart, then led to a round of salty quotations that Guru was left helpless to repeat until everyone standing around and watching got really, really bored.

And that’s not exactly what happened here. Get Smart was better sold, whilst Paramount people seemed sheepish and embarrassed of the latest Mike Myers endeavor. Funnily enough, that’s the one film of the summer – so far – that was an actual in-house effort. Iron Man was done with Marvel, Kung Fu Panda was Dreamworks and Indy was Lucasfilm. And that’s why you have to love Paramount. Get Smart did rather well, and we’ll see if it can weather next weekend well enough to get over $100 million. It should, but that’s about as good as it gets. While The Love Guru will have to settle for near $40, unless word of mouth is really good, or weekday sales pick up or something.

This weekend was something of a vacuum, as I think next week’s Wanted/Wall-E double header is going to re-kickstart summer in a big way. June often feels like a bit of a lull, for some reason.

Otherwise, Kung Fu Panda is holding strong but should take a major hit next week with the Pixar juggernaut closing in on it. but $200 is in the question, not out of it. The Incredible Hulk is starting to gain “so how much better/worse is this doing that the Ang Lee film?” traction, but the final number should be a bit higher. People love wrassling matches, I guess, and that’s how the film ends. With two CGI characters wrestling. I guess it all comes back to wrestling, doesn’t it? It’s the sport of champions. Man, do I love wrestling. and hot dogs. A nice sausage. Delicious.

67% is slightly more than two-thirds. M. Night Shyamalan already has the sequel to The Happening ready (What’s Happening), but it’s doubtful anyone’s going to bite into that sausage. The winner here is Fox for selling the film excellently. It was a cheap film, and the unrated DVD and international should be enough to make it a reasonable investment.

Indy is closing in on $300, and should get there sometime in the next ten days or so, but then it’ll be making room for Hancock, and such. Iron Man is already over that hurdle, got there Thursday, so everything now is fucking gravy cakes. But $310-$315 is getting done. Sex and the City might get to around $140, which – considering all the CGI of the film is a huge, huge success! Will we see a sequel in a couple of years? Why the fuck not? 

Zohan is going to limp to the nine digit range But it should be able to get there just. It’s not a big public failure or anything, it’s just a modest effort. No one’s going to complain, even if it’s just a little less than hoped for. The Strangers? That’s a home run and a half.

Be excellent to each other, y’all.