This weekend’s box office battle is all about redemption as Marvel Studios attempts to rescue The Incredible Hulk franchise from Ang Lee’s poorly received Hulk movie, which debuted strongly in 2003, and then dropped like stone (over 70%) during its second weekend and finished with a disappointing domestic total of $132 million, nearly half of which it earned on its opening weekend.  The Incredible Hulk’s chief new competitor, M. Knight Shyamalan’s The Happening will also seek to redeem something—in this case the reputation of the director of The Sixth Sense, who has stumbled badly in recent years with film such as The Village and Lady in the Water.  The majority of box office prognosticators appear to give the edge in this battle to The Incredible Hulk, and most feel that last week’s winner, Dreamwork’s Kung Fu Panda, is likely to come in second.

Few experts think The Incredible Hulk, which will open in 3,507 theaters, will even come close to matching the opening weekend total that Ang Lee’s Hulk film achieved in 2003, but Universal is clearly hoping the new Hulk film will have box office staying power.  In spite of an early round of negative buzz resulting from a feud between star/writer Edward Norton and the studio (see “Trouble on Planet Hulk(ywood)”), The Incredible Hulk has earned mostly positive reviews (72% thumbs up on Rotten Tomatoes) including Variety, which concluded that the film “would shake loose ample coin in all markets.

Analysts with access to advance ticket sales and tracking surveys are estimating that The Incredible Hulk will open “north of $40 million,” with women being the only key demographic element that is missing (though the experts said similar things about Iron Man, which ended up doing just fine with distaff viewers).  In spite of the fact that Norton has not been out promoting the new Hulk film on the talk shows, Universal, which is distributing the film, has put together a solid marketing campaign with lots of TV ads in key venues such as the NBA finals, while also making great use of cable/Satellite TV venues where the Sci Fi Channel is running The Incredible Hulk TV series and the FX network is airing  previous Marvel superhero movies peppered with ads for the new Hulk movie.  The Jade Giant’s most dangerous competitor for box office supremacy is likely to be Kung Fu Panda, which could earn as much as $40 million and take the Father’s Day weekend top spot if The Incredible Hulk falters.