Marvel Studio’s second effort, The Incredible Hulk, scored an impressive victory at the weekend box office with an estimated total of $54.5 million.  Dreamworks’ Kung Fu Panda dropped just 43% and took second with an estimated $34.3 million just ahead of M. Knight Shyamalan’s Happening, which opened with $30 million, the best debut for a horror film so far in 2008.  Overall the box office was up 26% over the same weekend last year--the third week in a row that the box office was up by more than 20% over its record-setting performance in 2007.

While The Incredible Hulk’s opening lagged behind Ang Lee’s Hulk, which earned $62.8 million during its opening frame in 2003, Universal and Marvel Studios are undoubtedly happy with the not-so-jolly green giant’s second shot at the big screen.  Audiences gave the new Hulk movie a CinemaScore of A-, which is certainly an indication that this film could have a lot more “legs” than its predecessor from 2003, which dropped like a stone after its mammoth opening. 

As expected the audience for the new Hulk movie was predominantly male (60%) with a slight majority (52%) over 25.  Interestingly the crowds for the new Hulk film, which averaged a solid $15,561 per venue, were very diverse (54% non-Caucasian) and fully 82% had seen Ang Lee’s 2003 movie, which certainly indicates that they bear the franchise no ill will. 

The Incredible Hulk opened stronger than the other major comic franchise reboot, Batman Begins, which earned $48.7 million.  Universal will certainly be happy if The Incredible Hulk can demonstrate the kind of longevity that Batman Begins did by amassing a domestic cumulative of $205 million in the summer of 2005 The one worrisome element of The Incredible Hulk’s debut weekend performance was a 15% drop from Friday night to Saturday.

Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan dropped 57.5%, but still earned an estimated $16.4 million, which was good enough for fourth place, but the real secret behind this weekend’s strong overall performance were the strong efforts from a number of holdovers, particularly Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($13.5 million), Sex and the City ($10.2 million) and Iron Man ($5.1 million), which took the fifth, sixth and seventh spots.  For the second week in a row Iron Man had the smallest percentage drop in the top ten falling just 31.4% in its seventh weekend in release.  Iron Man should cross the $300 million barrier later this week.