HollywoodIdiocy.com

The second Transformers movie, Revenge of the Fallen, landed far huger than its predecessor, raking in an impressive $112 million in its first weekend, and $201 million since its early opening on Wednesday. Considering it had a production budget of $200 million and is already in black ink, that makes this movie in every way one of the biggest opens of the year. Needless to say, it topped the weekend box office results.

The other major opening, My Sister’s Keeper, was about $100 million less impressive, opening in fifth place with only $12 million and needed GPS systems to locate it on the box office results chart.

The Proposal, The Hangover and Up took second, third and fourth places respectively, none of them able to top even $20 million. Year One fell precipitously, to sixth place with only $5.8 million, meaning look for it on Blu-Ray sooner than later.

Following the third series of the ITV hit Primeval, the British broadcaster announced they will not renew Primeval for a fourth series. The show, which averaged six million viewers in its first two series, was down to five million viewers in the third series, which is still way more than Reaper got in the US.

Of course, no viewer diet pill would have been enough to force Primeval’s ratings down to Reaper territory if the show had been anywhere near as popular as BBC-1’s Doctor Who. Just goes to show you that a Time Lord can still beat a dinosaur, even if Matt Smith is the Time Lord in question.

It was a lackluster week for new flicks this weekend as The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 drew only $25 million, a weak third-place finish, while Imagine that drew a mere $5.7 million over its debut weekend, good enough only for sixth place.

The box office champ was The Hangover, which drew a strong second week posting of $33.4 million to bring its 10-day total to over $105 million domestically. The Pixar film Up! continued to perform well, drawing $30.5 million in its third week, for a total of $187 million domestically to day, against a $175 million production budget.

One movie in need of disability insurance is Will Ferrell’s Land of the Lost, which fell to fifth place in its second week, drawing a meager $9.1 million in its second week, bringing its 10-day total to only $34.9 after the dinosaur flick cost $100 million to make. Of course the primary mistake for Ferrell was to take a Saturday morning live-action kids show, and turn it into a sex-driven, foul-mouthed adult comedy.

Of course, turning Holly from his daughter into a scientist girlfriend was not all that wise for those of us old enough to remember the Sid and Marty Kroft show, either.

The final episode of Reaper was one of the most-watched of the season; but it may not matter as the series seems headed into the abyss, unless it’s saved by syndication or whoever programs The CW Sunday Night schedule next season, which doesn’t appear likely.

Tyler Labine won’t return either way, it appears, as he has been cast in Fox’s Sons of Tuscon. Which is too bad because Labine was a consistent high point of Reaper. Perhaps it’s better if Sam and company stay dead; otherwise Ray Wise’s Satan may need to look into some appetite suppressants that work for all the camera-gobbling he’s been doing the last two seasons. Great performance!

Actress Karen Gillan is about to go from unknown to Who-fan object of obsession. It turns out none of the Doctors companions who’ve shared the TARDIS with David Tennant’s doctor will follow over to the new Doctor’s reign, Matt Smith. Instead, he’ll be accompanied by Gillan, who is 21 and unveiled by BBC as Smith’s new assistant over the weekend.

The boost in profile alone for the actress could help her afford some nice Wilmington NC real estate here stateside, where she might have a better chance to avoid all the geek attention sure to come her way when series five of the new Doctor Who debuts in 2010.

The animated movie Up! has box office receipts headed in the same direction… Up… way up! The Buena Vista release snagged an impressive $68.2 million in its first weekend of release, easily beating all other contenders and all without a memory upgrade for the theaters that hosted the filmed marvel. The per-screen average of $18K per showing was also easily the highest of any film this week.

Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian fared second-best, ringing up an additional $25.5 million in ticket sales to bring its 10-day total to $105 million, but with a $150 million budget, the film’s still far from reaching black ink territory. Spider-Man filmmaker Sam Raimi’s return to horror with Drag Me To Hell underperformed, raking in only $16.6 million to barely capture third place; Terminator Salvation was close behind in fourth place with $16.1 million. After 10 days in release, Terminator Salvation has raked in barely $90 million against a $200 million budget and is fading fast, meaning the franchise’s first Schwarzenegger-free installment may be a box office bust.

On the opposite end of the scale, Star Trek may have been in fifth place, but it still raked in $12.8 million after a month since its initial release and has crossed already the $200 million barrier, with a domestic total of $209.5 million and an additional $92 million in foreign box office so far, meaning the blockbuster has now crossed the $300 million barrier in global ticket sales. Not bad. (And thanks to a stronger foreign box office, X-men Origins: Wolverine is still just ahead of Star Trek with $315 million worldwide, even though the film’s lost momentum in the US.)

Welcome to the latest episode of “Dumb Decisions by NBC.” I’m your host, HollywoodIdiocy.com.

Clearly, NBC didn’t learn this past season when it canceled Scrubs a year ago, only to have ABC pick it up off the scrap heap and pair it with Better Off Ted, the best new workplace comedy since The Office. The strategy worked so well for the Alphabet Network that Scrubs has been renewed for yet another season, even though Zach Braff will only appear in six episodes next year.

Undeterred, NBC has made even more Dumb Decisions this year, just to prove that the network could be better-managed by computer memory than the current Entertainment Chief. Heck, forget computer memory, just put Tina Fey in charge and triple the NBC executive collective IQ in one fell swoop!

Here’s a list of this season’s crop of Dumb Decisions by NBC:

1) Turning over five hours a week of prime time programming to “Leno In Prime Time,” rather than, you know, actual entertainment. I predict Leno’s new prime time gig will die in the ratings, but NBC won’t care until a new administration takes over.

2) After ordering a super-sized season of My Name Is Earl, NBC cancels the four-year-old comedy at a time when there’s still plenty of life in it. Word is the blue collar comedy didn’t fit in with the new lineup of white collar workplace comedies NBC is favoring on Thursday nights. ABC and Fox are both reportedly interested, so My Name Is Earl is destined to become the next Scrubs debacle for NBC.

3) After Medium became the best-performing show on Monday nights for NBC during May sweeps (the net didn’t even test Heroes or Chuck in May, ending their seasons early), the network decided to forgo a fifth season of the psychic crime drama; word is CBS, which owns the show, will sandwich Medium right between Ghost Whisperer and Numbers on Friday nights next season, where it’s likely to prosper.

At least NBC renewed Chuck and Heroes, but with Leno taking over so much prime time real estate, will the Peacock even be considered a “Big Four” network anymore? Blame a bad economy all you want… there’s no excuse for such lame-brain decisions.

Multiple online sources are confirming that NBC has given an initial 13-episode renewal to Chuck; the “back nine” episodes will be determined most likely in the fall, depending on ratings performance. However, there are conditions attached.

Chuck will now be a show on weight loss pills. In other words, the ensemble cast will be scaled back, with some actors severely limited in the number of episodes they will appear in going forward; also, at least one supporting cast member may be cut. Finally, two members of the writing staff will be cut in further cost-cutting measures.

But in the end… who cares? Chuck will see a third season!

With an estimated $48 million three-day take, Angels and Demons, the prequel to the Ron Howard-directed, Tom Hanks-starring DaVinci Code, just barely took top honors at the box office this weekend, despite deep protests from the Catholic church over the movies “historical distortions.”

Coming in a close second place, Star Trek managed $43 million in its second week of release, bringing its total to date to over $147 million. Third place was Marvel Entertainment’s merry mutant slice-fest, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which drew a meager $14.8 million in its third week, finally topping $150 million to enter profit mode, but Star Trek is breathing on Wolverine’s heels and is expected to overtake the superhero flick in the coming week.

If that isn’t appetite suppressant enough for you, perhaps this’ll do the trick: no other movie even came close to topping $10 million in box office. Things should heat up considerably next weekend, however, as both Night At the Museum: Showdown at the Smithsonian and Terminator Salvation are scheduled to open, with Terminator Salvation expected to open huge.

Marvel Comics’ first X-Men spinoff movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, enjoyed a healthy $85 million opening weekend against a $150 million production budget, meaning the film made more than half of its budget back in the first weekend, usually a sign of a successful run. The Hugh Jackman vehicle was, of course, the top draw of the weekend.

Coming in a very distant second was Ghosts of Girlfriends Past with $15.4 million, also in its debut weekend, and second-week underdog thriller Obsessed with $12 million. No other movie even came close to cracking the $10 million barrier.

The mutant drama will receive major competition in its second weekend, however, as the much-anticipated J.J. Abrams redeux on the Star Trek franchise takes its opening bow in what is anticipated to be the first film of the summer season to top $100 million in its opening weekend… anything less would probably disappoint.

Angels and Demons opens the week after that, followed by Terminator Salvation, before May closes out with the debut of the animated family film, Up, so hold off on the birth announcements until at least Terminator Salvation has made its opening bow, OK? May looks to be a hot month for movies.

Although many of its familiar cast members may move on, ABC is seriously considering picking up Bill Lawrence’s comedy, Scrubs, for a ninth season – a possible second season on ABC after seven seasons on NBC. The network’s in-house studio, ABC Studios, produces the veteran comedy and with the likely exits of Zach Braff, Judy Reyes and probably more, the costs of production are sure to go down.

Of course, a renewed Scrubs could benefit from its new lease on life by focusing on the inexperienced interns introduced this season, which would return the show back to the roots of its comedy core: inexperienced doctors learning what medicine is all about. While the cast exit could make Scrubs: The Next Generation seem like a comedy on the best diet pills, it could also move on to produce a second generation of stars.

The real question is whether the show can hold its core audience without Braff and company around to anchor it.

When Zac Efron grows up, he wants to be Matthew Perry. Or can’t avoid it. Or something. Either way, Efron’s latest comedy has Perry shrinking down to Efron in a very Big/Vice Versa/Freaky Friday sort of way. The good-natured comedy might have already been done in a zillion variations, but the basic plot concept still has firepower at the box office, as the flick drew a respectable $24 million over its opening weekend.

That was followed by State of Play with $14 million, while Monsters and Aliens, Hannah Montana the Movie, and Fast and Furious all lingered somewhere in the $12 million range to round out the top five. The heavily-promoted dark comedy, Crank: High Voltage, was about as appealing to moviegoers as a triple-dose of Colonix, which drew only $6.5 million to take a very distant sixth place in its debut weekend.

Next weekend should be better, with the thriller Obsessed looking set to dominate, but the real start of the summer movie season comes on May 1, when X-Men Origins: Wolverine debuts, followed a week later by the J.J. Abrams version of Star Trek. Those are the ones I’m waiting for!