What Hollywood Learned This Summer

(NEWSER) - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince conjured up a weekend box-office win with $79.5 million, bringing its 5-day total to $159.7 million, Bloomberg reports. The Hogwarts sequel trailed only Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen for the year's best bow. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ($17.7 million), Transformers ($13.8 million), Bruno ($8.4 million) and The Hangover filled out the top five. More»

(NEWSER) - Summer may not always yield the best movies, but it never fails to deliver the year’s best trailers. Wired celebrates this sacred art by picking out the trailers that managed to throw the most hype onto the screen in 3 minutes or less. We’ve helpfully compiled them in our gallery to the left. More»

(NEWSER) - Pixar’s Up floated to the top of the box office this weekend with $68.2 million, USA Today reports. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian came in second with $25.5 million. Though critics loved it, Drag Me to Hell debuted to just $16.8 million, while Terminator Salvation ($16.1 million) and Star Trek ($12.8 million) rounded out the top five. More»

(NEWSER) - Even the Terminator couldn’t beat Ben Stiller's Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, which banked $53.5 million this weekend, Reuters reports. Terminator Salvation finished second with $43.0 million—but did haul in a $56.4 million 4-day total after opening Thursday. Star Trek ($22 million), Angels & Demons ($21.4 million), and Dance Flick ($11 million) rounded out the top five. More»

'Avengers' finally falls off the top spot

(NEWSER) - Men in Black: 3 turned out to be much more in the black than The Avengers , winning the three-day holiday weekend with a whopping $55 million domestically and $202 million worldwide. But, notes the Hollywood Reporter , it needs to do well to justify the $230 million Sony spent to make it. The Avengers, meanwhile, pulled in $37 million to put it at a hefty global gross of $1.3 billion. Battleship grabbed No. 3 honors with $10.8 million, while The Dictator took in $9.6 million, and Chernobyl Diaries pulled in $5 million, reports the AP . More»