That formula has apparently been in full effect this weekend as a film which put a few gentle twists on a very familiar property prospered at the box office. A second movie — in terms of marketing, at any rate — was an apparent carbon copy of its source material, notwithstanding a new cast, more violence, and a bigger budget (too much bigger, probably). That film will prove vastly less profitable, at best.

To be specific, Sony’s PG-rated “The Karate Kid” changed the setting and even the martial arts style of the original (it’s  actually entitled “The Kung Fu Kid” in China and Japan). It also changed the dynamic by making the “kid” (Jaden Smith) an actual child, rather than a high school senior played by a 23 year-old. As for the master, the film cast a performer as renown for his martial arts skills as for his acting and comedy chops, i.e., Jackie Chan. Combine all of that with genuine all-ages family appeal which makes casting an 11-year-old seem like an even shrewder move, and you have, of course, a hit with very healthy box office estimate of some $56 million. That’s almost a 20% improvement over this weekend last year according to Box Office Mojo. Hollywood may be feeling a bit more itself right now.

Despite going through a number of writers over the years, any appealing or intriguing alterations made between the TV and film versions of “The A-Team” were kept a well-hidden secret from everyone. Still, the PG-13 film from Fox had enough appeal to grab up an estimated $26 million from only slightly fewer theaters than “Kid.” Actually, $26 million may be less than half of what its rival made, but it’s a decent showing for a first weekend — assuming you don’t consider that its budget was also more than double that of “The Karate Kid” (i.e., $40 and $110 million, respectively). I wonder if Hollywood will learn a lesson from the ugliness of seeing a plan fail to come together. Nah. In any case it’s nice that my pre-weekend guess about which film would do better proved correct for a change, though I did expect the two pictures to be a bit closer together in terms of grosses.

Further down the list, Dreamworks/Paramount’s “Shrek Forever After” continued following up its below-par opening with a leggy aftermath, netting a very decent $15.8 million estimate. Lesson: if you’re going to run a franchise into the ground with sequels no one really wants that much, coming up with a story that some viewers actually like might help.

The #4 film was last week’s #2, “Get Him to the Greek.” The Judd Apatow formula of raunchy comedy that is actually funny combined with counter-intuitive pro-responsibility messages proved its reliability once again, as the film held reasonably well in its second run. Dropping a below-average 43% to an estimate of just above $10 million, the most morally conservative film to ever reach its clmax with a freaky threesome is now just $4 million shy of making back its $40 million budget. Considering that a sure-to-be lucrative home video run lies ahead, I’m calling this film a success. I think we’re assured of having Russell Brand and Jonah Hill horsing around before us for a while longer.

On the other hand, if you want to see the somewhat controversial and, I think, badly mis-marketed creepy science-fiction thriller, “Splice,” in a theater, do so soon. It dropped by 61% percent and to tenth place in its second week, earning only a wan $2.86 million estimate.

This was also an interesting weekend for limited releases. I don’t have time to go into everything (Indiewire does) but the #1 film in the country in terms of per-screen averages was, according to the Numbers, the biographical documentary, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.” It averaged $24,500 in seven theaters for a total of $171,50o. There’s nothing like the appeal of being a true show business survivor.

Also debuting quite strongly was the Sundance fave, “Winter’s Bone” which made $21,350 in four theaters. True, that only comes to $85,442 but, considering its $2 million budget and strong word of mouth, I’d say Roadside Attractions will do pretty well on this one. That’s especially so as an Oscar nomination or two — particularly for its highly acclaimed possible break-out star, Jennifer Lawrence, may not be impossible if the Academy remembers to take its ginkgo this year.

* Yes, they weren’t kidding. Ben Stiller and Tom Cruise are teaming up to make a Les Grossman movie, declares Nikki Finke. I try never to prejudge films, and I really did think Cruise was hilarious in “Tropic Thunder.” However, I think writer Michael Bacall, Ben Stiller, and whoever winds up directing really have their work cut out for them in terms of this not turning into some kind of inverted ego-fest (“look at me — I’m willing to act all crazy!”) like what we saw on MTV a few nights back.

* A new James L. Brooks romantic comedy by any name will probably be worth a look, and maybe better than that.

* It’s always seemed to me that the best part of the guilty pleasure appeal of “Entourage” — aside from Ari, Lloyd, and Johnny Drama, anyway — is the lightning fast pacing that nearly always leaves fans wanting more. Now, producer Mark Wahlberg is determined to give us more in the form of a movie to follow up from the conclusion of the television show. I’m concerned about whether he gets the concept of why you want to always leave an audience wanting more. If not, “Entourage”  could become the male equivalent of “Sex and the City” in theaters as well as the small screen.

* I’m getting more and more jazzed about the upcoming Jason Segal/Nicholas Stoller/James Bobin “Muppet” film. This freewheeling AICN interview with Stoller and Jonah Hill, which is naturally mainly about “Get Him to the Greek,” whets my appetite some more. If they can make the material as accessible to kids as they can make it funny for adults, they’ll have a huge hit on their hands. It’ll also be an interesting challenge for all of them to not have raunchy humor to fall back on. I think they’re up to it.

* Joseph Gordon Levitt is “rumored” to be in “early discussions” to play the Riddler in the third Christopher Nolan Batman movie, which as far as we know also features Bat-mite and a major role for all the former members of Menudo. In other news, I’m currently rumored to be in early discussions to write, direct, and star in the title rule of a reboot of the Francis the Talking Mule franchise.

* I haven’t seen “Splice” yet. Nevertheless, I am really tired of writers like Patrick Goldstein glibly implying that critics are somehow inherently wrong or “out of touch” every time they give decent reviews to a movie that does badly or, heaven forfend, gets a poor grade from Cinemascore — an organization that polls the self-selected group that paid to see the movie opening night, not a randomly selected audience. Cinemascore seems to be a fair enough predictor of whether a film will do well since the people who go opening night will form the nucleus of the word of mouth, but it does not look at the possibility that a given film will do badly because it attracted the wrong audience that night.

As I wrote on Sunday, “Splice” was heavily marketed as an R-rated horror film. In today’s movie world, that means an ultra-frightening and/or ultra-gore-laden film. Since I understand it’s actually more of a creepy odd-ball thriller and neither a gorefest nor a jump-out-of-your-seat scare-athon, of course the horror audience that went to see it opening night were, by definition, disappointed. If “Zombieland”  had been sold as a horror film, rather than as primarily a comedy, it might have failed too. The audiences  expectations are key.

Now, if Goldstein personally disliked “Splice,” that’s fine. So did 26% of Rotten Tomatoes critics and even many of the positive reviews noted what the writers saw as fairly serious flaws, so it’s not like they were all declaring it a masterpiece or a surefire hit. Just because critics notice interesting things in movies doesn’t mean they’re aliens from the planet Cinephile.  To paraphrase whoever paraphrased F. Scott Fitzgerald, the critics are different. They see more movies.

* Michael Fassbender, the outstanding Irish actor with the German name who broke through last year as dashing movie critic Archie Hickox in “Inglourious Basterds” and real-life IRA martyr Bobby Sands in “Hunger” is, according to Roger Friedman, on the horns of a supervillain dilemma. Should he play young Magneto opposite James McAvoy‘s young Professor Xavier in “X-Men: First Class” or should he be whichever villain Spiderman will be facing in the Marc Webb reboot? That’s what I think most struggling actors would consider to be a very high-class problem.

* Even though I cover a number of them, I have limited patience with casting stories, especially since so many of them are so speculative and vague. If you can’t get enough of them, however, Anne Thompson has more  on who’s thinking about what.

* Salma Hayek’s absolute terror of snakes is kind of funny but I feel slightly wrong even posting about it here. Put me near a beehive, and I’m not sure I’d be any more composed. I’m okay with most animals but stinging insects are another matter.

* I have no idea how the remake of “Fright Night” will turn out; I’ve never even seen more than a few minutes of the original, but the cast is sure shaping up in an interesting way. It’s another example of the truism that yesterday’s B-movies are today’s mainstream productions. The latest additions to the cast are Andy Tennant of “Dr. Who” fame and Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Mint-Plasse is playing another nerd character, but I really think he’s well on his way to avoiding becoming the Eddie Deezen of our era and getting past his McLovin success.  If he can do a credible London accent(s), I have a suggestion of a role Mintz-Plasse might play just a few years down the road (if anyone could ever get the movie bio rights, which may be doubtful).

* I’m really not sorry I didn’t run the new trailer for “Gulliver’s Travels” with Jack Black last week. One of the worst trailers I’ve seen in a while. Did anyone even bother to read Jonathan Swift for this one?

* “The Cove” is finally being seen in Japan by at least a few people in Japan, threats from rightist groups notwithstanding.

* RIP Steven Rivers, the second Hollywood figure in his fifties to pass on in as many days. PR people don’t always have the best reputation, but he apparently found ways to do some good while doing well in his job. Among his many clients were both Robert Redford and his Sundance Institute as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Anyhow, the news wasn’t all bad. The final “Shrek” production continues to capitalize on the fact that it’s been better received than the prior film in the hyper-extended series. It’s showing reasonable legs, earning an estimated $25.3 million for Dreamworks/Paramount in its third week and dropping a lower-than-average 41.6%.

Some seem to think it’s a disappointment, but “Get Him to the Greek” sure looks like a moderate success to me. It broke out from a pack of four new releases, two of which were supposed to earn more money than it, and earned a couple million more than some of the gurus were predicting on Thursday, an estimated $17.4 million. I guess the fact that some critics mentioned “The Hangover” in their reviews kind of ginned up expectations, but sleeper successes like that have their own surprising logic and always come out of left field. Universal needs a lot more than this to really break it’s losing streak, but it’s not a horrid start.

Nikki Finke, for some reason, expected “Greek” to make more than the movie it’s spun off from, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” However, the fact of the matter is that that film had more of an almost classical screwball romantic comedy premise that appeals to a wider audience of both men and women when done well, with more traditionally appealing leads — Jason Segal’s  unpretty but brilliant nude scenes notwithstanding. Even if Russell Brand and Jonah Hill were in the earlier film in scene-stealing supporting roles, the Mutt and Jeff twosome is still not all that widely known and a fairly unusual pairing for a mass audience movie in our time. Moreover, the $40 million budget is modest these days, making the very home-video friendly, Judd Apatow-produced, “Greek” a very probable nice earner over the long haul.

Moving on, things get worse. “Killers,” starring my least favorite male actor in the universe and Kathryn Heigl, came in third with an estimate of $16.1 million. With a budget of $75 million, this is obviously the opposite of a  homerun for Lionsgate. Despite being a family film, the CGI-aided talking dog movie, “Marmaduke”, had at least a certain degree of failure pretty much written all over it, coming in at sixth place with an opening weekend estimate of $11.3 million for Fox. Not quite in the basement, but with a $50 million budget and no reason to expect any kind of legs, this one looks (I cannot resist) like a bit of a dog.

As for last week’s aforementioned debuts, it wasn’t pretty. Both Disney’s “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and, more so, Fox’s widely reviled “Sex and the City 2” showed no legs this week, dropping by worse than average 54% and 59% respectively, and coming in fourth and fifth with $13.9 and $12.65 million respectively.

Though Nikki Finke and others are trumpeting the tale of how it even got a theatrical release at all, the creepy science-fiction thriller “Splice” pretty much died with $7.45 million estimated for Warners, which is keeping the project at arms length. It apparently did badly on Cinemascore, which I guess reflects my hunch that the modern blood-and-gore-thirsty, trauma-loving, horror audience was the wrong group to pitch the movie too, especially given its potentially misleading R-rating (as much for sexuality and language as “sci-fi violence”).  It should have been sold as more of an adult science fiction thriller and probably started out with more of a limited release. Instead, they promised the audience a chili-bacon cheeseburger and gave them Fettuccine Alfredo. Well, it only cost $30 million, it has its fans, and there’s always DVD/Blu-Ray.

* Jeremy Renner of “The Hurt Locker” is “near a deal” to play Hawkeye in the Avengers film to be (theoretically) directed by Joss Whedon, who hasn’t said a word officially to anyone in months, as far as I can tell. Renner is a smart choice. Playing a character who hasn’t previously been introduced is going to be a special challenge in this movie and actors without real ability and charisma probably need not apply.

* So, if the Wrap is correct, Brad Pitt likely won’t end up staring in the U.S. remake of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” It looks like that will be Daniel Craig, instead. Having seen the Swedish film, it seems to me he’s a much better fit for the part of the male lead. The character has a bit of a hang-dog, defeated quality to him that just doesn’t fit Pitt. I think Craig can pull that off easily. He should probably gain or lose a bit of weight for the part. This guy might do okay with woman, but he’s a coffee-and-cigarette addicted journalist, not a perfectly exercised super-spy.

* Speaking of matters Bondian, as per the Playlist, Christopher Nolan is describing his very highly anticipated “Inception” as his Bond film, in a way.  I’m personally not a fan of “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” but it’s an interesting model, nonetheless.

* And, speaking of Christopher Nolan, to news burning up the geek film blogosphere today that he won’t be recasting the role of the Joker for the next Batman movie. This is news? Doing otherwise would not only arouse anger from lots of people, it would put a new actor in a completely impossible position. That being said, Nolan’s habit of killing bad guys puts him in a tough spot because, of the three best Batman villains, Ra’s al Ghul,and Two-Face have been killed in his first two films, and the tragic real-life death of Heath Ledger ironically makes it three for three, at least as far as onscreen appearances are concerned. The Penguin, the Riddler, and Catwoman are all fun characters, but lacking in menace and the serious tone that Nolan likes. At least he hasn’t killed Scarecrow yet. Nolan’s realistic approach makes Man-Bat a tough call, too. Am I forgetting someone?

* More superhero stuff. /Film has the new Green Lantern logo. Ooh

* Rush Limbaugh, the movie. If they can make me in any way feel anything but contempt about that guy, that’ll be some real cinema genius. Say what you like about Nixon, W, or William Randolph Hearst/Charles Foster Kane, they cared about something. I never really got the impression that Limbaugh cares about anything other than Limbaugh. As for casting, Kelsey Grammer would be the guy for it, I think. Grammer is a very conservative Republican who has talked about going into politics, which could be a big plus in selling the movie as something other than a partisan hatchet job, though “creative differences” could easily arise.

* So fairy tales are hot, hot, hot and Brett Ratner wants to do an “edgy” Snow White that is “not your grandfather’s.” I think it is now time to officially ban the word “edgy” and the phrase “not your grandfather’s” from all thoughtful discourse.

* A former director of the Chicago International Film Festival is now head of production at Paramount.

* More inside movie-ball. Anne Thompson is filled with dismay. Russ Fischer at /Film issues a “WTF” and wonders if someone is “shitting” him. Christopher Bell at the Playlist comes up with both a “Whaa?” and an italicized “Say what?” I personally cried “Great Caesar’s ghost!” or the equivalent thereof when I heard the news.

The source of this consternation is word that Disney is entering negotiations for the ongoing sale of mini-major Miramax with a construction executive and investor named Ron Tutor and his partner, David Bergstein, which is where this gets weird. Thompson describes Bergstein as a “beleaguered financier,” Bell calls him a “bullshit artist extraordinaire.” Both terms are mild compared to what people really call him around town.

The fact of the matter is to that to say that Bergstein’s name is mud is to vastly over-value mud. His legal troubles are endless, he is universally regarded as having run a number of once-strong companies into the ground, and when the excellent but troubled director David O. Russell acted, by all accounts, like a total professional for once on the film, “Nailed,” it was nevertheless closed multiple times because of Bergstein’s apparently ultra-reckless or worse handling of the finances. (Kim Masters‘ piece from April, titled “Hollywood’s Biggest Hustler” makes fairly riveting reading.) The film remains unfinished two years later with two days of shooting left on the schedule and his name comes up in casual conversations between random folks in L.A.  All in all, venereal crabs are more popular than this guy.  Alex Ben Block of THR the details on the negotiation and Bergstein’s latest legal maneuver.

* Back in the eighties, when I assure you I was knee-high to a zygote, I was convinced that John Milius’s “Red Dawn,” with an absurd scenario about a Soviet land-invasion of the U.S., might hasten a real nuclear war by encouraging hysteria that was, in my view, already making a deadly mockery of our foreign policy at the time. Could the remake spark a real, new Cold War with China? Not by itself, surely, though economic issues and enough of the right/wrong kind of thoughtless propaganda or disinformation often can. In any case, the Chinese government is apparently unhappy about this remake, and it’s not because it thinks it’s a sign that Hollywood is running out of ideas.

* Mike Fleming chronicles how the fairly well-received science-fiction thriller “Splice” barely avoided becoming a TV movie. There’s an interesting bit of the post that shows the nastiness of the litigious tendencies of today’s studios. In this case it was because of a supposed resemblance between the movie’s resident creature and certain blue alien folk you all know.

* Speaking of Mr. Na’vi eco-defender guy, he’s not my favorite spokesmen for my positions, however, I absolutely, positively cannot disagree with James Cameron on BP. Can you?

To a lesser extent, the second week of the widely hated “Sex and the City 2” is also a contender for third place according to DiOrio — in his video, he doesn’t mention it in writing — but the Numbers see things quite a bit differently. I’d personally expect a bigger than average drop-off from it’s unimpressive debut simply because I get the feeling that hardly anyone liked it much, perhaps not even the franchise’s biggest fans.

Now, I’m writing this quite late at night (or early) and I’m not really in the mood to go into one my usual detail explications of all four new major releases, but we do have quite an assortment which I guess will fragment the market a bit. Suffice it to say Uncle Carl expects them all to come in the teens, mostly the mid to lower with the Numbers being generally more optimistic for all newcomers.

Inexplicably tracking best of the bunch is the PG-13 “Killers” from Lionsgate starring my least favorite actor — ever in the history of the universe, I think — Ashton Kutcher,  but also starring Kathryn Heigl, who’s just fine with me.  It’s being kept from critics, rarely a sign of massive success, especially for an action comedy-thriller-romance with theoretical cross gender and age appeal. This isn’t some trashy torture porn flick or fart-infused teen comedy. On the other hand, it’s got Kutcher.

Next up in terms of fiscal expectation I gather is, Lord help us all, the CGI-assisted talking dog movie “Marmaduke” — yes, that Marmaduke, the dog from the unfunny comic strip — which I suppose is supposed to ride the crest of family appeal to a decent showing for Fox. This is a movie that might appeal to small children, but I have to wonder if it’ll have any allure whatsoever to a single human over seven. I’m skeptical of the hopes for this one, though the forbearance of parents should never be underestimated.  It’s PG-rated, by the way, which means its either full of annoying scatological humor or the G-rating is entirely a thing of the past. In any case, it’s reviews are most certainly in the toilet. I don’t think they’ll harm it — I think the very idea of a “Marmaduke” movie will, however.

Faring far better critically are the films expected to, naturally, do least well of the bunch. “Get Him to the Greek” is very much on my mind as I’ve just finished a way long interview piece about it below this post. I think that I and our reviewer on this one, David Medsker, mostly agree, though I was less disappointed by its admittedly counter-intuitive final act. It’s a flawed but winning and, at times, utterly brilliant comedy from director Nicholas Stoller and the Apatow specialists in R-rated comedy.

It reteams Russell Brand and Jonah Hill from Stoller’s outstanding “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” — though Hill is playing a different character and the marketing is not playing up it’s spin-off status too obsessively. It’s doing quite well with critics, who are probably as starved for a decent comedy as everyone else. Some are even comparing it to last year’s super-sleeper, “The Hangover.” Universal most surely could use that kind of a hit, but it feels to me like less of a home-run and more of a decent single or a double that will probably do quite well over the years on home video.

Finally, since “Splice” from Warner Brothers and Joel Silver looks like a reasonably intelligent science-fiction monster horror flick low on gore but reasonably heavy in other kinds of thrills and chills, and a fairly obvious spin on the “Frankenstein” myth, it’s expected to do the least well. The original buzz was strong but now it seems to be getting mostly decent, but pretty far from ecstatic, reviews. In any case, since today’s horror fans expect a movie to induce PTSD, whatever success it has will have to be from sci-fi fans and old fogeys who actually enjoy watching the original “Frankenstein” movies. It would be fun to be surprised for a change. Maybe it’s R-rating, largely for language and sexuality, will fool them.