1. Hancock - $66 million
When not delighting crowds at New Village Academy Oh-Tee Eights games as that wrestling team's mascot Elron the Iguana, Will Smith also manages to shatter records in only the way The Biggest Star in the World can. His presence in Hancock, for example, turned an ill-conceived, anti-superhero movie about an alcoholic underachiever who accidentally puts out fires with his super-upchuck abilities into something America simply had to experience for themselves: $107.3 million over 5.5 days, $66 million from the weekend alone. That works out to roughly 10 million people who surveyed the sour, puckering butt-face (above) used as the film's central marketing image, and paid to see this movie anyway. That's superstardom.

2. Wall-E - $33.417 million
Pixar's melancholy meditation on the dark (seriously dark!) places towards which our things-obsessed society is heading crossed the $100 million mark over the weekend. The film's message is so bold, however, that its makers—who have long relied on merchandising and fast food tie-ins to push the product—suddenly find themselves painted into an ideological corner. Still, Disney has come up with a P.R.-friendly solution: Disney's Sprout In A Boot ™ foundation pledges that for every square-mile of Wall-E packaging dumped into the nation's landfills, a single bean sproutling potted in an adorable hobo's boot will be donated to a worthy school, for display and educational purposes.

3. Wanted - $20.607 million
4. Get Smart - $11.125 million
5. Kung Fu Panda - $7.5 million
Summer '08s Trio of Assassin Entertainments continue their stealthy creep towards profitability and inevitable sequeldom. But only one of these three contains an army of suicide-bombing rodents, waging jihad bis saif against those who have wronged them. We'll never tell which—you'll just have to see all three to find out!

8. Kit Kittredge: An American Girl - $3.6 million
The wide-release of the Depression-era movie based on the wildly popular American Girl doll franchise managed only a disappointing eighth place. Audience feedback suggested most of the intended demo lost interest once they realized the narrative was essentially locked-in, and that they couldn't drag star Abigail Breslin into a hair salon for a braid-treatment and some tea and cucumber sandwiches whenever they felt like it.

• BOX OFFICE MOJO WEEKEND BOX OFFICE July 4-6, 2008 [Box Office Mojo]

Tina Fey (30 Rock), Glenn Close (Damages), America Ferrera (Ugly Betty), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (The New Adventures of Old Christine), Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives), Mariska Hargitay (Law and Order: SVU), Kyra Sedgewick (The Closer), Minnie Driver (The Riches), Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) and Jeanne Tripplehorn (Big Love): these were the women who were nominated for Emmys, by-in-large playing strong, capable, well-written roles. And what's more, most of these women are, gasp, over 35.

Are there so many more available roles for women of a certain age on TV because producing a television show is that much cheaper? Are aging bodies less obvious on the small screen, and so they're more acceptable? Are Hollywood honchos just stuck believing that women don't see movies, or that men don't want to see movies with anything but eye candy? It's probably a combination of all of the above, and even though those televised, meaty roles are something to be proud of, there is not a single black actress on the short list for Best Actress Emmy (there are two Latinas: Ferrera and Eva Longoria-Parker).

I know I've said this so many times before, but there is something concrete we can do to help: go see movies made by women, or made with women in respectable roles. I'd tell you to go see something specific this weekend, but the only recent release with a plucky female protagonist is Kit Kittredge, and if you're not a Jezemom, I'm guessing that holds limited interest for you. Sigh. We clearly have a long way to go.

Warner Brothers Decides To Embrace The Women [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
Why Won't Warner Embrace The Women? [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
Warner's Robinov Bitchslaps Film Women [Deadline Hollywood Daily]
Sarah Silverman Lands In The Top 10 List Of Emmy semifinalists For Best Comedy Actress! [Gold Derby LAT]
Looks like Mary McDonnell Of 'Battlestar Galactica' And Elisabeth Moss Of 'Mad Men' Are On The Emmy Top 10 List [Gold Derby LAT]

Earlier: Ultimate Chick Flick The Women Is Finally About To See The Silver Screen

Kit Kittredge: An American Girl has no sex and not much of a city.

But this G-rated movie adventure is shaping up as Hollywood's next serious bid for female viewers, some of whom showed their power by pushing the R-rated comedy Sex and the City to surprisingly strong first-weekend ticket sales of more than $57 million two weeks ago. ...

[American Girl]'s mail-order catalog, a primary engine for sales, has a blurb promoting the movie on its May cover. Cities with American Girl retail outlets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and suburban Atlanta — will get to see the movie early, beginning on June 20. That first round is being helped along on the Web with Kit's movie blog and, at the Grove shopping mall in Los Angeles, with the giveaway of "Kit's Home on Abbott Place," an elaborate playhouse built by Pardee Homes as part of a benefit for the homeless.

The homeless angle! Why didn't Speed Racer think of that? That's hardly it, though; there's the in-store, mother-daughter dining parties and the dynamic approach to the film's G rating, featuring young Kit's (Abigail Breslin) Depression-era spunkiness and "doubts" about her father, played by Chris O'Donnell, upon learning he once voluntarily portrayed Robin in a Joel Schumacher film. WB brass, meanwhile, at least one high-ranking member of which has gone on record suggesting marketing is secondary to the movies it supports, are insisting today that the experimental "poster defacement" phase of its Get Smart campaign is coming along exactly as planned. We can only wonder how Picturehouse would have done it.

• More Girls, Little Ones, Try to Take Back the Multiplex [NYT]