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SUNDAY AM: Here are the official box office numbers -- Sex And The City finished its opening weekend No. 1 with North American domestic gross of $55.7 million in 3,285 theaters. The R-rated female romantic comedy posted a great $16,968 per screen average even though many multiplexes had it playing on 7+ screens. 
But after a female phenomenal Friday opening of $26.9M, the pic plunged 34% to make only $17.7 million on Saturday. And Sunday estimates expect another 37% downturn for $11.1 million. So on both Saturday and Sunday, the romantic comedy will be beaten by Paramount's Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull which playing in 4,264 venues earned $12.2M on Friday, $19.8M Saturday and an estimated $13.9M Sun for a weekend total of $46M, which was -54% from its Memorial Weekend debut. But because of steady business, it's made a cumulative $216.8M. That's exactly what Hollywood pros had been warning about: that Sex And The City would be a one-day, and one-weekend, wonder with no legs. But it still opened as the biggest R-rated comedy motion picture (beating American Pie 2's $45.1M) and the 5th biggest R-rated film ever released (behind The Matrix, The Passion Of The Christ, 300, and Hannibal). The only female-driven movie to come close to SATC in box office was the Hannah Montana movie, but there's no comparable R-rated chick flick.
So I've just heard that Warner Bros is already planning for the Sex And The City sequel! "It's the only female movie that's created a frenzy," a top Warner Bros exec told me this morning. "To me, this is a cultural phenomenon. Hats off to Michael Patrick King and Sarah Jessica Parker and their team because they dug in their hooks and knew how to make it work." According to the exit polling I've obtained, an incredible 85% of the audience for the movie's opening Friday were women, and of those 80% were over the age of 25. Warner Bros claims to be seeing repeat business already. On Saturday, the audience was 75% females, who came back with boyfriends and husbands in tow. That's why the studio feels the pic is "extremely well positioned" to keep making money. Only the numbers will tell.
Thanks to counter-programming against Sex, the 3rd-place shocker this weekend was Rogue Pictures/ Universal's horror pic The ... Read More »
SATURDAY AM: Here are Friday's official North American numbers from the studios for the biggest romantic comedy debut -- No. 1 Sex And The City truly shocked Hollywood pros by opening with a hanging-from-the-chandeliers $26.9 million from 3,285 theaters. The big question now is whether this staggering wanna-see among women for the HBO Films/New Line/Warner Bros female froth sustains through Saturday and Sunday showings so the weekend total can soar past $70M and maybe even $75M. I'm already hearing that studio moguls are looking through their film and TV libraries to see what else they can produce for the fortysomething-and-older female -- a demographic that the entertainment industry generally ignores. Not any more -- or is SATC a once-in-a-generation phenomenon? But younger women are also seeing the pic. As one tipster told me, "I saw the throngs of women waiting in line -- starting at 9ish and still there at midnight when we got out of the movie. The thing I noticed: the women were all early 20s, not in their 30s or 40s at all. They were 18 to 25. So I'm not sure where people are getting this over-40 demo but I am pretty sure it's the young girls who are the most excited for this flick."
Within days of USA Network renewing Law & Order: Criminal Intent with an order for 16 episodes, the series has just lost its showrunner. I'm told Warren Leight has left to be the showrunner of HBO's In Treatment. It's a big blow to Bonnie Hammer, promoted two months ago to head the newly created NBCU Cable Entertainment & Cable Studio. The former USA Network/Sci Fi Channel boss had been in the midst of hammering out a new deal with Leight, under whose leadership CI was the top drama series in basic cable primetime for the fourth quarter, more than doubling USA's audience in the 10 p.m. Thursday slot from the same period the previous year. The first-run CI segments last fall averaged about 4.1 million viewers and about 2 million adults 18-49. By contrast, HBO's In Treatment has struggled to find an audience since its January 28th premiere tbombed with only 446,000 viewers. To drum up interest in the first time an HBO series has been stripped Monday-Friday, the pay channel has been putting full and free episodes on the Internet. So Leight will face quite an uphill battle. The Tony Award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and film director joined the staff of CI in its 2nd season on a tip from Theresa Rebeck to then executive producer Rene Balcer, who subsequently recommended Leight to takeover as the show's executive producer and head writer in 2006 when Balcer left at the end of the fifth season. 
11 PM UPDATE: Friday's Sex And The City opened with great foreplay for the biggest romantic comedy debut. Really early box office numbers could be as high as $26 million to $28 million and for the weekend $65 million to $75 million. That's stunning the Hollywood pros. "It could reach or exceed the high end if the final West Coast numbers match the East Coast's. Those totals could be higher. Huge," one rival studio exec exclaimed to me. "It's a true sensation. People thought it would do well. But nothing like this. The top end expected was $40M." Still, some experts wonder if this is a front-loaded phenomenon and the numbers won't hold on Saturday. But Sex And The City will certainly beat last weekend's No. 1 blockbuster, Paramount's Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, which made $12M today and should finish by Sunday around $37M-$39M: that's -60%, but last Friday began Memorial Weekend. See my story, 
SUNDAY AM UPDATE: The helmer's flack just emailed me to say that "Rob Marshall was concerned about your report that his departure from ICM had anything to do with Harvey Weinstein. Here is what Rob has to say, personally, about his decision to change agencies." Hey, I went with what my excellent sources told me he said at the time in terms of Harvey Weinstein. After all, poor Rob has to work with Harv again. But because I love revisionist history, I'm happy to update with his statement:
It's hard not to root for a Depression era kiddie movie that costs under $9 million, showcases good clean fun for little girls, and stars Abigail Breslin, the Hayley Mills of her generation, as well as a great supporting cast of very funny adults like Wally Shawn, Jane Krakowski, Joan Cusak and Stanley Tucci. So it sucks that the studio for Kit Kittredge: An American Girl opening July 2 has now been killed off. Can Picturehouse successfully release a film when it’s shutting down? In this case, apparently yes thanks to Hollywood greed. Orphaned Kit Kittredge has been adopted by Warner Bros and supervised by New Line and groomed by HBO. But it's Warner Bros who now controls the American Girl franchise and is already developing the next one (as a musical set in the 1970s). So let's look back at all the people who have fought to parent this little pic.
She'd overseen entertainment and technology stories, including the Los Angeles Times' embarrassingly weak coverage of the writers strike which new editor Russ Stanton effusively praises in this 
There was, for example, no Page One news article or photo of the 4,000-person WGA strike rally, the biggest in the guild's history. The WGA march on Fox was reduced to a 655-word story on page 2 in the Business section. And the paper used an unofficial estimate of 3,500, not the WGA's estimate of 4,000 or the LAPD's estimate of 5,000. I've read articles three times as long about French wine-making. Instead of a photo of the strike on Page One, there was a generic shot of Benazir Bhutto, an article about Rudy Giuliani and Bernard Kerik, and a really urgent piece about Michelin ratings and LA chefs. And for the life of me, even seven paragraphs in, I still can’t figure out what the Column One story about “A Pioneer Refuses to Fade Away” was about.
for the network run jointly by Warner Bros and CBS. Then silence. The "explanation" making the rounds was that DiSanto, who's been a very big deal at MTV for more than a decade, was still negotiating his CW deal. Well, DiSanto this week had a puff piece written about him where he said he isn't leaving MTV. But today, this CW rumor went from a whisper to the talk of the town. So why? "Someone is really pushing this story hard," says a CBS insider. "But I believe the person who told me it's not happening." And the bigtime TV power-players also think it's smoke, not fire. Perhaps it's karma that DiSanto (EVP of series, development and animation for MTV and 
head of programming for MTV2), has to work overtime to dispel the chatter. After all, this is the guy responsible for some of the most-talked-about 
Also, I 
Picture this: AFTRA’s president, negotiating committee and various staff scurrying through the lobby at 5757 Wilshire with suitcases in hand Wednesday in a mad dash to depart the building and avoid briefing SAG's leadership or even its negotiating committee on their new deal with the AMPTP. It happened -- and I'm told it was funny in a lame-ass kind of way. Tragicomedy, because the losers were the 40,000 dual cardholding actors – a majority of them here in Los Angeles – who "got ditched like a bad prom date" by the AFTRA negotiating ... 
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