Cinematical has just been informed that Nia Vardalos' My Life in Ruins has scheduled a May 8, 2009 release date, which, so far, puts it opposite Star Trek as the weekend's only other wide release. And yes, we're told it will be a wide release, and that a brand, spanky new trailer will arrive soon (pay no attention to the one leaked online earlier in the month). Produced by Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Ruins stars Nia Vardalos as she returns to her

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Last weekend, the box office exploded with The Dark Knight, which broke the opening weekend record, while Mamma Mia! did what it could in the shadow of bat wings and Space Chimps couldn't reach the top five with its $7.2 million. Matt was almost spot-on with his predictions last week, but I'll try to hold down the fort this week while he's away.

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Maybe you've seen them, maybe you haven't, but French thrillers are making a comeback in North America. That's good news for people uninterested in art houses solely for the sake of watching foreign films: You don't have to be a Francophile to appreciate smart, meticulously generated suspense, and that's exactly the appeal of several French movies hitting American theaters this year.

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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:

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Hancock
What's It All About: Will Smith plays Hancock, a hard drinking anti-social superhero, and a PR agent played by Jason Bateman sets out to repair Hancock's public image.

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Yesterday's New York Post contained a gossip item in Page Six taken from the book party for James Rosen's The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate in New York, where attendee Tony Danza expressed an interest in playing Richard Nixon aide H.R.

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Steve Carell scored big this week recreating the role of Agent Maxwell Smart in Get Smart, providing the best opening weekend ever for a film with Carell in the lead. The Incredible Hulk fell into second place for its second week but Hulk and Kung Fu Panda both outdid last week's other new release The Love Guru. Here are the totals:

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

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The rumor mill has been awfully quiet on Hancock recently, despite everybody and their mother predicting megabucks upon its July 4th weekend release. But there's at least this: in an apparent attempt to take after Iron Man, which did the same thing back in May, Hancock will be hitting some US theaters a few hours early.

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After the disappointing box office of both Speed Racer and The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian last month, it's apparent that May was too busy a month for all its blockbusters to succeed. Last week, Eric D. Snider initiated a discussion about Caspian's release date and many of our readers agreed that it should have been released in December, or any other month, for that matter.

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Sex and the City surprised a lot of people, not by doing well, but by doing extremely well, pushing Indiana Jones back to the number two spot for its second week of release. Last week's other new release, The Strangers, starring Liv Tyler, scared the American public out of a respectable amount of cash as well. Here are the numbers:

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One thing you can count on in Hollywood is that when a film under-performs at the box office, the studio will have a bevy of explanations for it -- and it's never just that the movie is no good. (Wouldn't that be great, though? "Yes, our tentpole summer release tanked. Our best explanation for this is that it was just a huge pile of crap.")

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To absolutely no one's surprise, the return of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones made some serious cash this past weekend, achieving the tenth best opening weekend in history. Including Memorial Day receipts, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull pulled in $125 million. Prince Caspian slipped into second place, but in doing so tumbled 58% from the previous week. This summer's first blockbuster, Iron Man, took third place for its fourth week of release and has taken in a total of $252.6 million so far. Here's how the top five looked:

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A poorly-reviewed movie easily fought its way to the top of the weekend box office. That's almost standard practice for big-budget Hollywood studio product, but is quite unusual for an indie film. Joshua Seftel's comedy / drama War, Inc. (First Look) earned $17,650 per screen at two locations, according to estimates compiled by Box Office Mojo, despite receiving mostly negative reviews -- Rotten Tomatoes pegged the critics at only 24% positive. Writing for Cinematical, Joel Keller described it as "an ambitious film that fails miserably at everything it attempts to be.

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In a little while I'll set off for the theater to watch Sex and the City. I've never seen more than a minute of the HBO show, and everything that I've heard about it has seemed vaguely repulsive. I don't know who the characters are, what they're known for doing or not doing, what story arcs fans are expecting to pop up or get resolved, or what's supposed to surprise me. In short: I am not part of Sex and the City's target audience.

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