Buns Of Steel
1. Iron Man - $100.75 million
Just when a lackluster spring box office had Hollywood worried, Iron Man jets into town, slapping his Stark™ brass-rocket-parts on the table and daring all challengers to do the same. (Batman was game, though gave up ten minutes into an unsuccessful attempt at unbuckling his utility belt. The Hulk, meanwhile, turned a shade of greenish-red and slinked out of the room, years of performance-enhancing gamma ray abuse having taken an irreversible toll on the contents of those stretchy purple pants.) No question about it, Iron Man enters the Great Movie Summer of 2008 a fearsome, armor-clad conquistador. Among its record-breaking achievements:
· The second-highest grossing opening weekend ever for a non-sequel.
· The tenth-highest grossing opening weekend overall.
· The best opening ever for a Paramount live-action release (though the studio is only distributing and marketing it for Marvel Studios).
The high-sheen, flame-resistant finish on the titanium-alloy cake? Iron Man's wadded-up-script-missile-launching capabilities paid off with a movie worth watching.
2. Made of Honor - $15.5 million
Sony's Department of Counterscheduling Activities, meanwhile, are reportedly "feeling good, especially considering how big 'Iron Man' turned out to be," about the $15 million performance of Made of Honor. "But watch out for summer '09, when McDreamy plays Matrimony Man, flying around in a spandex tuxedo and zapping the underdog heroine with his twinkle-ray vision! Then we'll be looking at 9-figure openings, too."
3. Baby Mama - $10.332 million
Here's proof positive that so-called "chick flicks" don't need to be set around weddings, star McDreamies, or be weighed down by jaw-droppingly stupid pun-titles to succeed. As Tina Fey's comedy—holding fairly steady with a 41% drop—ably proves, women are just as eager to pay to see unlikely buddy comedies about bright, barren women and the slightly brain-damaged embryo-receptacles they hire to do their reproductive bidding.
4. Forgetting Sarah Marshall - $6.015 million
Suffering from the common depression that follows a taste of the Hollywood limelight, Jason Segel's penis has retired to the tranquility of its Montana ranch, where it plans to "just ride some horses and plot out the next steps of my career."
5. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay - $6.015 million
True, its a 60% decline, but Harold and Kumar still managed to cling to the top five, putting, for the first time that we can think of, two movies about U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East at the top of the box office charts. The curse has been lifted! Re-release Rendition, Lions for Lambs, and Redacted!