Weekend movie box-office round-up

If you're curious how movies did this weekend - and gosh, who isn't? - "Shrek" took first place, perhaps because families had nothing else to see. "Prince of Persia" came in third with only $30 million, perhaps because it looked like the Mummy, without mummies.

"Sex and The City" - make your own mummy jokes here, I'm still tired from the weekend - came in second place, but they were all lackluster. Nothing exploded out of the gate - perhaps because Iron Man 2 opened early, stealing Memorial Day momentum. Next year the hot summer movies will be released in April, and the inevitable Tim Allen / Adam Sandler "Santa"-themed movie will show up around the Fourth of July, and the theater will have as much relation to the season at hand as the clothing aisles of Target.

As for movies of The Future, Guillermo del Toro - what would people shout if he'd gone into bullfighting? left "The Hobbit." Drat. The man is good - anyone who saw "Hellboy 2" knows he can build worlds and make you believe in fantastical situations. (He should have directed "Sex," really.) His official statement cites "the mounting pressures of conflicted schedules," which spells more trouble for the Hobbit film; as we learned last week, there doesn't seem to be much of a script yet. Details, details. At the rate this is going it'll be out in 2014, and Robin Williams will be Gandolf.