The longer-than-anyone-expected-or-even-thought-remotely-possible reign of Ben Stein's anti-evolution screed Expelled: No Intelligence Required atop the year's documentary box office is nearing its end, we hear. And naturally, it's the heathens knocking it down: After outlasting withering reviews and a desperate legal broadside by Yoko Ono, Expelled's $7.6 million gross is expected to succumb this weekend to Bill Maher's godless hit Religulous — itself a $7 million earner in two weeks of release. But while Expelled may lose the ticket battle, is it still the winner in the culture war?You could make an argument either way (and believe us — people are), but Lionsgate never left much doubt that it would obtain the top-doc spot sooner or later. Yet while it's never been on more than half as many screens as Expelled — 568 to 1,062 — Religulous had the compounded advantages of a Toronto Film Fest launch, Maher tearing up Sherri Shepherd and anyone who would sit still for him on national TV, aggressive, conspicuous marketing, and a furtive NYC/LA residency to help qualify for its forthcoming Oscar nod. In the end, all that topping Expelled means this weekend is that Lionsgate's $3 million diatribe might break even earlier than expected. Expelled's budget was about the same, but stunned observers by finishing in the top 10 its opening weekend with little more than a grassroots push by the marketers who brought you The Passion of the Christ and other Christian-themed hits. Among them, Kirk Cameron's Fireproof carried the baton into fall with $17.2 million in less than three weeks. All due respect to Maher and Co., but that might be the long-term business to be in during bleak industry patches like this. Just avoid chihuahuas — you can't lose.

A couple months ago, when Ben Stein's documentary Expelled stunned industry and cultural observers alike by selling $7.6 million worth of intelligent-design hokum to its conservative Christian base, you might remember he found an unlikely foe in aggrieved widow Yoko Ono. Disapproving of Expelled's inclusion (and criticism) of the John Lennon classic, "Imagine," Ono and Lennon's publishers at EMI filed an injunction temporarliy preventing the producers from including the disputed scene in their DVD release. The courts ultimately tossed it, but today we're learning that Stein's persuasive copyright-law revisionism was too little, too late to vanquish a nemesis as crafty as Yoko:

This just in! Swaggering $3 million man and new Yoko Ono lawsuit target Ben Stein responds to his latest nemesis via press release: "So Yoko Ono is suing over the brief Constitutionally protected use of a song that wants us to 'Imagine no possessions'? Maybe instead of wasting everyone's time trying to silence a documentary she should give the song to the world for free? After all, 'imagine all the people sharing all the world...You may say I'm a dreamer But I'm not the only one I hope someday you'll join us And the World can live as one.'" No doubt a fitting rejoinder from a man who once provided legal counsel to Richard Nixon. Good luck, Ben! [Movie City Indie]

As one might have expected following the opening-weekend success of his anti-Darwinism documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Required, everybody in town wants a piece of Ben Stein. Among them: Yoko Ono, a huuuuuge Stein fan from back in his Nixon speechwriting days who nevertheless bristled at the part of the film that featured "Imagine" without the John Lennon estate's permission:

On a Monday when Jet Li, Jackie Chan and Jason Segel's penis duked it out for biggest story at the weekend box office, another argument was taking place among indie followers who witnessed a different star performance altogether: Ben Stein, whose anti-Darwinist screed Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed finished in the week's ninth-place spot with $3.1 million. Its $2,997 per-screen average — no great shakes for most mainstream openers — is nevertheless more than double the $1,401 average of Morgan Spurlock's Where In the World is Osama Bin Laden? To hear at least one documentary observer tell it after the jump, love Stein or hate him, this is pretty big: