U.S Box Office Report - 20th - 22nd June 2008

1. Get Smart - $39.1M - $39.1M
2. Kung Fu Panda - $21.7M - $155.6M
3. The Incredible Hulk - $21.5M - $96.4M
4. The Love Guru - $14M - $14M
5. The Happening - $10M - $50.2M
6. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - $8.4M - $290M
7. You Don't Mess With the Zohan - $7.2M - $84M
8. Sex and the City - $6.4M - $132.3M
9. Iron Man - $4M - $304.7M
10. The Strangers - $1.9M - $48M

The decision to revive a successful 60s TV show with Steve Carrell and a modern updating seems to have paid off handsomely. Get Smart takes the top spot this weekend with a solid $39M take. Up against another comedy, holdovers from last weekend and some uninspiring trailers and reviews it appears the public went for Carrell rather than Mike Myers.


Based on a 60s TV show, Get Smart features Carrell as a recently promoted secret agent working alongside the glamorous Agent 99 played by Anne Hathaway, with The Rock & Alan Arkin rounding out the cast. Steve Carrell had seen some success with Dan in Real Life earlier in the year, which opened quite low but stuck around for a while, but was still smarting from the disaster that was last summer's Evan Almighty. As a star, this marks his biggest ever opening and it needed a good start too, what with Wanted and the sure to be huge Wall-E due next weekend, both capable of hoovering up a huge amount of the box office market.

Kung Fu Panda has faired much better than last weekend but knows that its days are seriously numbered now thanks to Wall-E next weekend. Kung Fu Panda has already recouped its production budget and should end up with around $180M when all is said and done. It's foreign take should easily equal that and expect it to be one of the top five DVD sellers come christmas. The Incredible Hulk is off over 60% in its second frame, proving that not everyone was willing to give the franchise a second chance. It had a solid opening last weekend but that quick tumble could put a serious spanner in the works with the film now frantically scrambling to surpass the $137M taken by the first film back in 2003. With the competition from Wanted next weekend not helping either, we could be looking at the last Hulk film for a while.

The Love Guru appears to have brought out the die hard Mike Myers fans and pretty much no one else. Excluding the Shrek movies, Myers hasn't appeared in a major release since The Cat in the Hat back in November 2003. The Love Guru is his big screen return to creating, writing and acting but if the reviews and word of mouth are anything to go by, he shouldn't have bothered. The Guru Pitka is his new creation, a Hindu self help guru who travels to Canada to help out an ice hockey team manager (Jessica Alba) and her team. Trailers looked horrific and unlike Austin Powers, which flopped upon release but became a huge hit on DVD, The Love Guru looks like it'll fade from cinema screens and simply vanish on DVD. That sound you can hear is Myers dusting off the script ideas for Austin Powers 4.

After a higher than expected taking last weekend, The Happening falls harder than Lady in the Water. The saving grave for M. Night Shyamalan is the fact that The Happening took more than 'Lady' did on its opening weekend and factoring in its foreign take, is already in profit. Only the fans and the curious turned out last weekend, with anyone who'd not heard how bad the film was turning up this one. It'll last another couple of weeks in the charts thanks to the limited number of new releases but with one strong weekend behind it, The Happening has already happened.

Indiana Jones edges ever closer to that fabled $300M, which it might see as soon as next weekend. Globally the film has taken over $650M and is currently the biggest international film of 2008. Domestically Iron Man is still just ahead but has now begun to shed its location count at a much higher rate to make way for newer films so Indiana Jones has a slim chance of overtaking it, but only if it does so quickly as it has also begun to be removed from a number of locations.

Faced with two wide opening comedies has finished off The Zohan in only its third weekend of release. Like The Happening, it'll manage another couple of weekends on the charts but its box office take for those will be nothing to write home about. The film should just about recoup its $90M budget before vanishing from screens. Sandler will next be seen in Bedtime Stories. Sex & The City has continued to perform well on the global market as its begun a real slow down in the domestic one. It's opening weekend take was amazing and while subsequent weekends haven't matched, its weekday totals have really help keep the film afloat. That global total of $266M speaks volumes and guarantees a sequel won't take quite as long to enter pre-production.

Iron Man became the first film of 2008 to cross the $300M mark this week, possibly its last in the top ten. It's been nothing short of fantastic, far outperforming expectations both domestically and internationally. It's weekend to weekend percentage drops have been very respectable too, proving its wasn't has heavily front loaded as some other summer movies have been. Iron Man should top out around $320M. Also spending its last weekend in the top ten is the horror thriller The Strangers. Having recouped its budget in its opening weekend the film has continued to perform well in a very big and busy market. Expect a final tally of $60M.