There is a 3 minute sex scene set to Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' during the climax of Warner Bro's The Watchmen. Warner Bros. has just announced that they've reach their own climax: the 1 Billion dollar mark in domestic grosses this year. Movies like 17 Again, Friday the 13th, Gran Torino, The Hangover, He's Just Not That Into You and Watchmen and uh, some wizard movie have added to the cash orgy. [ Variety ]

NBC Universal lost 41% in profits last quarter. Execs claim the brutal economic downturn has slashed advertising. Three months ago, in the previous round of earnings, some execs said they thought the ad market had hit bottom. Industrytes point to the a certain lanky, ginger-haired late night host for their reduction in eyeballs and therefore ad revenue. The worst may not be over, yet guys! [ Variety ]

Trucks that do things! Humans that love them! Aliens who fear them! Coming up next in your dreary Hollywood adaptation: Voltron. [THR]

Twilight news that doesn't involve the dreamy undead! Billion-Dollar-Having Warner Bros. and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way are moving ahead on a Twilight Zone movie, hiring Rand Ravich to pen a script based on the iconic Twilight Zone TV series. [ Variety ]

Silky-voiced actor Morgan Freeman is "in talks" alongside shiny-headed Bruce Willis to star in Summit Entertainment's espionage thriller "Red," based on the WildStorm/DC Comic. [Variety]

Alert your fellow book club members! Tell your spiritually starved mother! Alert your knitting circle! Casting for the movie adaptation of Eat, Pray, Love is almost complete. So far we have Julia Roberts, Viola Davis, and Richard Jenkins. [ THR ]

WHAT'S NEW: There are plenty of reasons to hate January — post-holiday blahs, the weather, another season of 24 — but it took us a while to find peace in the wasteland of the month's film culture. Because while the mostly bad Oscar films you've already seen expand to thousands of screens like a contagion (Mendesitis? Fincher pox?), Paul Blart: Mall Cop and My Bloody Valentine arrive like big, dumb wonder drugs, treating us with the essential seasonal hope that we can forget, if even for a couple hours, about Revolutionary Road.

And that's what we'd expect an ailing America will in fact do this weekend, with a lively counterprogramming mix promising a busier-than-usual January frame. Kevin James's Blart is the only legitimate contender to knock Gran Torino out of last week's surprising first-place slot, and we'll just go ahead and presume it will with $27.4 million to Torino's $24.7 million. Another duel unfolds below them at No. 3 and 4, where we like My Bloody Valentine 3D to stay ahead of Hotel For Dogs by at least a million dollars — maybe $19.6 versus Dogs' $18.4.

Also opening: The chop-socky-meets-Bollywood blockbuster Chandi Chowk to China; the unearthed Godard noir Made in U.S.A.; the 20-years-in-the-making, Oscar-shortlisted doc Nerakhoon (The Betrayal); the poet-meets-biker, poet-loses-biker Leather Jacket Love Story; and the Susan Anton D-potboiler Playing With Fire.

THE BIG LOSER: Competition from MBV will result in a spectacular freefall for The Unborn , which we foresee plunging more than 70 percent before disappearing to DVD.

THE UNDERDOG: Fox Searchlight can drop Notorious on whatever crappy weekend it wants and still probably pull at least $13 million on half the screens of Blart, MBV or anything else. The specialty label had its hagiographic Biggie Smalls biopic on both urban and media radar as early as fall 2007, when it launched a public casting call for the lead; Jamal Woolard probably had the role locked up well before that stunt transpired, but Searchlight's continuing genius advancing its in-house product — Juno was its last — will pay off once again.

FOR SHUT-INS: This week's new DVD's include the Dane Cook folly My Best Friend's Girl, Ed Harris's forgotten Western Appaloosa, the Kevin Costner political comedy Swing Vote, the underrated melodrama Brideshead Revisited, Tyler Perry's even more wildly underrated melodrama The Family That Prays, and the long-awaited sixth season of Walker: Texas Ranger. Run, folks, don't walk.

1. Gran Torino — $29 million
A film we forecast at a solid #3 coming into the weekend, Clint Eastwood in fact rode his farewell performance and the strength of a catchy hit soundtrack to blockbuster-esque numbers. We should have known better than to sell the legend's persona short; thankfully his retirement means we can offer much slighter underestimations in the future, including...

2. Bride Wars — $21.5 million
Fox's second consecutive strong opening after Marley & Me hinted that the studio may have what it takes in 2009 to profit on films developed and produced within its own system, as opposed to those smashes it simply lends to other studios. Welcome back, gang!

3. The Unborn — $21.1 million
The Jewish-themed slant on The Exorcist cashed in on the untapped appeal of what's come to be known as "pantyschauf," or Hebrew girls' ancient, coming-of-age tradition of shrieking their dead siblings away wearing nothing but a tank top and cotton underwear.

4. Marley & Me — $11.4 million
Another Fox coup: Despite a 53-percent drop from last week, Marley retained its Top-Five spot through consistently strong word-of-mouth and the redoubtable appeal of a unprecedentedly forthright ad campaign.

5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button — $9.5 million
Like its title character, Button's gross regresses with every passing week, soon to threaten a crazed plunge from the roof and die cradled in its ex-lover's arms at Paramount, who will bury it in the family plot in a fancy casket replete with director's commentary. You never know what coming for you, except when you do.

WHAT'S NEW: There's no wanting for prestige or variety this weekend, with Fox's remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still leading a saturated box-office charge on 3,600 screens. This time around, Keanu Reeves arrives from space to portend our imminent doom, evincing a timely environmental-awareness message with the aid of Jennifer Connelly and fitfully clusmy CGI. And if there's anything holiday moviegoers love, it's a Keanu apocalypse; expect Earth to pull around $38.3 million.

The next biggest opening is something called Delgo, the sci-fi quasi-Romeo & Juliet rendered with discarded Pixar 2.0 software and the budget voice talent of Freddie Prinze Jr., Jennifer Love Hewitt, Malcolm McDowell and Burt Reynolds, among others. We like this one for about $3.2 million en route to Flopz™, neck-and-neck with the Latino ensemble (plus Debra Messing for gringa kicks) laffer Nothing Like the Holidays at around $3.3 million.

Doubt, meanwhile, opens small this week against fellow Oscar groveler The Reader; the former is faring far better with critics than the latter (unfairly, we might add), but the Kate Winslet lookie-loo factor won't disappoint the Weinstein Company when the numbers come in Sunday night, probably around $41,000 per screen. Also, if you've got four and a half hours and a seat cushion to spare, pack a lunch and check out Che in its one-week-only Academy qualifying run. It's the kind of thing you can tell your grandkids about years from now when they tug on your sleeve and ask you to regale them with stories of cinema's good old bloated days.

A few stars are actually smattered elsewhere in the mire: Ethan Hawke and Mark Ruffalo's Beantown gang drama What Doesn't Kill You opens on three screens, while Michelle Williams's spare girl-loses-dog indie Wendy and Lucy arrives on two. Also opening: The noirish Dark Streets; the animated fantasy Dragon Hunters; the stop-motion Oscar hopeful $9.99; the Chinese vanity project Waiting in Beijing; the Kim Basinger revenge flick While She Was Out; and the polish Holiday tale Hania. Whew.

THE BIG LOSER: Not so much a "loser" as an example of what we wish there was less of in the world, Timecrimes is an acclaimed Spanish thriller that nevertheless orbits around the genre conventions of time travel. Not to be arbitrary about it, but dear film industry: Please let the time-travel movie die. They're ultimately the same hoary stunt performed again and again, illogically at worst (Primer) and amusingly at best (Back to the Future), and almost always forgettably. Let Timecrimes end it. Please.

THE UNDERDOG: Speaking of going out gracefully, Clint Eastwood says his performance in Gran Torino is his last. And why not? Eastwood's late-career revisionist streak has knocked off its last myth: The vigilante hero, a man who'd sooner revolt in Dirty Harry than keep pace with the degradation of social order. Torino's grizzled Korean War vet still takes the same vengeance on Hmong gangs and black thugs overtaking his Detroit suburb, but essentially in the service of a multiethnic utopia perceivable just over the horizon. (He even gives his Silver Star and titular vehicle to the tormented young man he's taken under his wing, a little more optimistic bellwether than Harry Callahan's climactic badge-tossing in 1971.) As a straight drama, Gran Torino isn't especially good — sort of a violent, profane revenge epic crossbred with an afterschool special — but! Viewed in context with the last four decades of Eastwood's mercury, it's a strikingly rich, funny, elegant and utterly fascinating valedictory.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include The Dark Knight, the thrilling, Oscar-chasing doc Man on Wire, the first four seasons of Happy Days, and holiday-ready complete-series box sets of The Wire, Get Smart and Deadwood.