Props, then, to the people behind the “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” for coming up with a slew of extras that will be fun for the kids and give their parents something to chew on as well. Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) and Alfie Enouch (Dean Thomas) host a series of clips where the child actors meet with various behind-the-scenes personnel, discussing editing, makeup, costumes, special effects, and even owl training. Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), meanwhile, plays a fun game called “What’s on Your Mind?” with the cast, asking questions about their favorite food, people and places. It’s completely fluffy and light, but fun.

There are several deleted scenes, including one involving clouds gathering over Hogwarts that should have made the final cut. On the self-promotion front, there is a featurette dedicated to the opening of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Islands of Adventure in Orlando. The biggest surprise, though, is the 50-minute film (!) “J.K. Rowling: A Year in the Life,” a rather sobering documentary about her upbringing and the parallels between her life and the Potter universe. Good stuff, Warners.

Like so many things in life, the meaning of the weekend gross for the Judd Apatow/Adam Sandler “serious comedy,” “Funny People,” is a matter of perspective. On the more cheerful side, we have the trades, which typically enough are accentuating the positive, noting that the somewhat risky project, at least by modern mainstream film standards, was actually #1 at the box office, even if the amount it took the lead by was less than mega-spectacular.

The Hollywood Reporter (actually the AP as carried by THR) thinks that Judd Apatow is living in the best of all possible box office worlds:

Movie audiences have taken a liking to Adam Sandler’s more serious side…[“Funny People”] grabbed the top spot at the weekend boxoffice with a $23.4 million debut.

Variety takes a more measured, but still somewhat upbeat, tone:

Adam Sandler’s “Funny People” has topped a moderate weekend box office with $23.4 million at 3,008 playdates.

Nikki Finke, however, has a different way of seeing things. Here’s her headline:

‘Funny People’ No Laughing Matter; Opens To Lousy $8.6M Fri And Worse $7.4M Sat For Disappointing $23.4M Weekend

La Finke goes on to point out that Universal has been lowering expectations from Sandler’s usual $30-$40 million openers to a more modest $25 million, and fell a bit short of that.

It really does come down to your frame of reference. In my weekend preview post, I mentioned the Sally Field/Tom Hanks starring “Punchline,” which I think is a better point of comparison than any particular Apatow or Adam Sandler film, including 2002’s “Punch-Drunk Love,” simply because of the subject matter, the more-serious-than-you-might-expect approach, and the level of star power. That movie got similarly mixed reviews but was one of 1988’s lowest grossing films, despite the presence of two bankable stars. Two small differences: one had laughs, the other doesn’t, and Sally Field was not ever thought of as a great comedian, “The Flying Nun” notwithstanding.

A side note: when describing the occasional phenomenon of movies with mixed reviews and worse box office eventually emerging as a sort of classic, I forgot last time that the Coen Brothers’ “The Big Lebowski” was another movie that divided and/or confounded critics while generating poor box office on its initial release. It’s worth mentioning as it is probably the biggest “cult hit” of our time responsible for God knows how much in DVD purchases and rentals, not to mention doing its bit for the bowling industry and the consumption of White Russians. You certainly wouldn’t have guessed that at the time, though it did seem odd at the time that the film did so badly when me and the other three people in the theater couldn’t stop laughing the whole way through.

I’m not saying that “Funny People” is a similar case, (maybe ask me after I’ve seen it), but it’s just worth noting that, as long as some people love a movie, the game is never really over. As the story goes, when Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai was asked, sometime in the middle of the 20th century, for his opinion about France’s 1789 revolution, he answered, “It is too soon to say.” Still, if I were Universal I wouldn’t be banking on that $100 million take they were hoping for, not this year.

At the #2 spot for this week, I can report that Harry Potter, apparently benefiting from those suspiciously helpful handwritten notes from the Half-Blood Prince as well as his movie’s expansion into a number of more expensive IMAX/not-really-IMAX 3-D screens, turns out to be holding his own this week. Indeed, he sent the rodents of “G-Force” back to the lab, beating the guinea pigs $17.7 million to somewhere around $17.1, or slightly less, says Box Office Mojo’s table.

The week’s other new releases pretty much sank like a stone. Audiences apparently thought “Aliens in the Attic,” which was not shown to critics, looked about as lousy as I thought it looked, and the film came in at a lackluster fifth place. This is not good for a high concept family film, especially since it actually debuted on slightly more screens than the R-rated “Funny People.”

Similarly, the lack of allure of the “torture porn”-esque “The Collector” might signal that the horror sub-genre, controversial under any name, has become inevitably played out. (You can only make people feel miserable so many times before they begin to resent it.) The feel-bad flick managed a mere $3.625 million. It’s true that it was only on a relatively modest 1,300 screens, but the lackluster $2,736 per screen average is nothing to get out of the iron maiden to celebrate over. Compare it to this week’s box office per-screen winner, the indie comedy romantic sleeper, “(500) Days of Summer,” which managed an outstanding $10,338 average for a total of $2.75 million on a mere 266 screens.

I’m still very much at at Comic-Con so I’m going to be keeping this one simple.

As usual, my Thursday preview was wrong, wrong, wrong.  “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” only managed an estimated $30 million, somewhat below the $31 million Carl DiOrio suggested as a kind of “floor.”

Meanwhile, the poorly reviewed but family-friendly guinea pigs of “G-Force” showed extra strength and became the highest grossing film with a weekend take of somewhere in the neighborhood of $32.2  million. That marks a new success for producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who certainly has a history of high profitability, medium-to-low quality hits like the “Pirates of the Carribbean” and the “CSI” franchise, to name only two of the more recent examples.

It’s possible that the progression of the Potter story arc makes the films extremely safe bets but somewhat self-limiting to those who are not up to speed on the Potter epic. I hope it isn’t true that stronger than usual reviews somehow damage the sixth Potter film. Still, the news wasn’t all bad for the kid from Hogwarts, as the latest chapter in the story did win the international derby with $84.4 million.

The number 3 spot went to the film that many thought would take second. The R-rated rom-com, “The Ugly Truth,” seduced enough audience members to earn an estimated $27 million, which is not bad at all. “Orphan,” however, turned out to be the red-headed stepchild at the nation’s cinemas with a relatively forlorn $12.8 million, making it a somewhat disappointing weekend for movies involving young people from Warner Brothers.

A slightly rushed Comic-Con box office preview….

This week sees the release of three movies with a certain degree of box office potential, middling-to-awful reviews, and little hope of outdoing the projected $31 million-floor for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” The most likely runner-up, says THR‘s Carl DiOrio, is “The Ugly Truth,” which got a facially challenged 08% “fresh” rating from Rotten Tomatoes. DiOrio says the tracking augers about $20 million worth for the R-rated comedy featuring beefcake Gerard Butler and beauty Katherine Heigl.

Also hitting theaters is the 3-D CGI animated “G-Force,” a critically derided action-comedy focusing on what Jason Zingale terms “the goldfish of the rodent world.” This one, of course, has the benefit of family appeal, and 3-D doesn’t seem to be hurting movies these days. Variety is calling $20-30 million, and I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see either a photo finish or a minor upset here with “The Ugly Truth.”

“Orphan” has aroused some minor controversy and outright disdain with its horror variation on the old “Bad Seed” storyline, but apparently its tracking (whatever that is, I’m still trying to figure) isn’t showing all that strongly. Ironically. This is actually by far the best reviewed of the three new releases, with a not-even-close-to-steller 50% “fresh” RT rating. Everything is relative.

Finally, a couple of smaller films are continuing to gradually grow wider as they show some promise of breaking through. Kathryn Bigelow’s highly acclaimed and buzz-heavy “The Hurt Locker” continues to roll on to what I’m guessing is a more than possible “Best Picture” nomination given the doubled number of slots this year. “(500) Days of Summer” is already experiencing what may be the start of a small critical backlash, which is seemingly inevitable with successful indie comedies. Given the track record of “Juno,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” etc., this is probably a good sign, commercially speaking.

With the completely and utterly sold-out Comic-Con starting mid-week, Hollywood publicists seem to be working overtime to fulfill your no doubt insatiable need for geek news. I could probably write seven or eight posts catering to nerd proclivities. But you’re getting just one today, (and, with the help of few snafus, this one took much longer than it should have). A few highlights

* Leonardo DiCaprio’s company has signed writer Rand Ravich (“The Astronaut’s Wife,” the TV series “Life”) to do a new film somehow tied to Rod Serling’s classic anthology science-fiction/fantasy TV series, “The Twilight Zone.” Many of you will remember the 1983 film, which utilized multiple writers and directors and consisted of three adaptations of well known episodes from the original series, one tale loosely drawn from a pair of episodes (sadly infamous due to the accident which killed actor Vic Morrow and two illegally hired children, very nearly ending the career of director John Landis), and a framing story featuring Albert Brooks and Dan Aykroyd. No word on what form this new film would take — a single tale would be missing the entire point of “The Twilight Zone,” IMO — and I’m unfamiliar with Ravich’s work. So, it’ll be interesting to watch this one move further along the pipeline.

[Update: Apparently, one year ago at least, the idea was to make a single film drawn from an episode of the series. Why, I have no idea. I learned this via Monika Bartyzel, you can read her post and my messed up comments here.

* The word on the overseas grosses for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” are in and they’re a new worldwide five day record of $297 million. Blimey.

* Will Dr. Who’s most recent incarnation’s next voyage on the Tardis take him to Middle Earth? All I can say is that I can’t imagine any of the guys whose names are being bandied about turning into Ian Holm in their later years, but then I just watched the 1939 version of “Beau Geste” in which rangy Gary Cooper as a child is played by future sprightly “Singin’ in the Rain” song and dance man Donald O’Connor. Movies haven’t really changed much.

* Seth Rogen‘s no-doubt unconventional vision of “The Green Hornet” is still alive, with modern-day surrealist comedy specialist Michel Gondry at the helm. However, I have to alert you that it is not, strictly speaking, a comic book adaptation. The character was originally created for radio — though no doubt with comics and movie serials in mind — by Fran Striker, who also brought us the not-dissimilar Lone Ranger character

* Anne Thompson says the Peter Biskind Vanity Fair article now available online about the late Heath Ledger is “must-read” material. She also mentions that scenes from Ledger’s final film, Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” will be screened at Comic-Con this week.

* Which brings us back to the week’s big event. The entire schedule is viewable and searchable online, but who’s got time for that? Critic, actor, and full-time fellow geek Luke Y. Thompson has an outstanding rundown of the more filmic aspects of the fanboy mishegas in San Diego over at Nikki “I don’t do geek” Finke’s place.

Luke and I had a great time chatting and doing our film fanboy thing at the Los Angeles Film Festival a couple of times, but does he really think Dracula author Bram Stoker wrote more believable dialogue than Joss Whedon? I understand but strongly disagree with those who find Whedon’s stylized, witticism heavy quasi-Hawksian dialogue annoyingly arch to the point of causing their brain to hurt — but it seems to me that’s doubly true of the humor-free Stoker, which is kind of a strange comparison in any case Stoker was all melodrama and Whedon’s a genre-blender par excellance. It’s been some time since I read the book, but all I can remember in terms of dialogue is everyone constantly reminding each other in high flown Victorian terms how much they loved each other and hated Drac.