Weekend Box Office Guestimates: Blue = High | Red = Low – Estimates In Millions

Finally, the summer movie season has arrived! Shrek 2 looks to be on its way to a record May opening, having gleaned $49,445,000 in its first three days of release, with $28,500,000 in box office receipts on Friday night alone.
Compare that to either Troy’s or Van Helsing’s rather anemic opening weekends, of $45.8 and $54 million, respectively.
In reporting on the opening of Shrek 2, The Hollywood Reporter asks and answers, How green is the weekend tally?, while Gitesh Pandya at Box Office Guru suggests that Shrek 2 looks “to inject some green into the early summer box office,” as does Reagen Sulewski at Box Office Prophets.

Quentin Tarantino catching a fly

The 57th annual Cannes International Film Festival is off to a rousing start, with the head of the jury slugging a security guard on the way into a screening of Man Bites Dog by Belgian actor, writer and fellow jury member Benoît Poelvoorde.
So much for Quentin Tarantino’s first day on the promenade.
For the next 12 days, the French Riviera city will host a dizzying run of screenings, publicity spectacle, dealmaking and exclusive parties attended by more than 15,000 movie paparazzi and movie writing hangers on. The galaxy of A-list stars expected to attend this year include: Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron, Maggie Cheung, Cameron Diaz, Gong Li, Penélope Cruz, Uma Thurman, Tom Hanks, Sharon Stone and Sean Penn. Y-y-a-a-w-w-n-n.
Okay, okay. At least in part, the Cannes Film Festival is about movies. In that regard, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar kicked off the festival with Bad Education, a dark tale of priests’ sexual abuse of boys, homosexual love and lies.
Otherwise, want to know what’s going on at Cannes? James Mottram, of Britain’s Channel 4, offers a straightforward account of the “well-balanced affair,” while Roger Ebert reflects on the meaning behind Cannes, in the process offering hints as to the films which may emerge as contenders for the coveted Palme d’Or, the top prize at the festival.

The New York Post’s Richard Johnson is reporting that “A consortium of mysterious European investors has approached [Mel] Gibson about a possible takeover of Disney now that Comcast has thrown in the towel.”
The Defamer speculates: European, mysterious, loaded, and loves Gibson? Is even the Vatican coming after Eisner now?
While The Daily Kos says, “Seriously, though, could you imagine Disney being added to the right-wing nutjob empire? We might as well let Rev. Moon buy them out and make Mickey his disciple.”

The reviews for the first big summertime movie blockbuster, Van Helsing, are in and it’s not looking good for Universal Pictures.
The range of reviewer criticism available at Rotten Tomatoes — where the film receives a 4.2 rating on a scale of one to ten, with 96 out of 123 critics conferring the film with ‘rotten’ status — include derisive commentary from Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly, “a long, kinetic, yet dreary mess” to James Berardinelli’s “the worst would-be summer blockbuster since Battlefield Earth.”
VanRamblings found the $145 million Van Helsing to be little more than a Grade-B Saturday afternoon monster flick, a silly-verging-on-stupid waste of time, money and resources, and utterly forgettable movie fare. Here’s hoping that Troy has more to offer.