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Today's (and likely tomorrow's) column is abbreviated. Here is a quick recap of yesterday's box office. Hellboy II: The Golden Army failed to capitalize on its opportunity to retake the number one spot from Hancock. The Will Smith blockbuster fell 7.8% to $3,510,957 while the comic book adaptation declined a much stiffer 14.2% to $3,188,120. While it's not unusual for a new opener to experience this sort of drop relative to other titles in release, this is another warning sign that Hellboy II will not be experiencing an extended stay at the top of the box office food chain. Even if you do not believe in the idea of competition (and BOP has a longstanding tradition of believing it's overrated, of course), the reality is that a certain DC Comics outing enters theaters at midnight tomorrow. The Baby Ruth and kitten-loving spawn-of-Satan good guy may get swallowed whole.

The news is better for Journey to the Center of the Earth, the third place finisher on Tuesday. Its $2,652,429 take represents a decline of only 2.6%, easily the best of the larger scale titles in release. $26,394,778 after five days in theaters isn't outstanding by any stretch, but it's probably going to go down as a win for Warner Bros. The same is untrue of Meet Dave, a film you will be relieved to know I can only kick while it's down for another couple of days. The good news for Eddie Murphy's latest flaming disaster (at least this one doesn't involve a transvestite) is that the Tuesday performance is nearly identical to Monday. $671,027 is only a 0.1% drop from the previous day's $673,493. Of course, equaling virtually nothing is still virtually nothing. Meet Dave is at $6,596,438 after five days. As a point of reference, the much less heralded (and equally derided) Kit Kittredge: An American Girl earned $5,602,247. That's not the sort of company an Eddie Murphy movie wants to be keeping.

Overall box office for the top ten brought in combined receipts of $16,513,423. This is down 6.1% from Monday's $17,589,746. We'll have one more day of weak overall performance before The Dark Knight shreds the competition.

Daily Box Office for Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Rank	Film	Distributor	Daily Gross	Daily Change	Weekly Change	Running Total
1	Hancock	Sony/Columbia	$3,510,957	- 7.8%	- 52.7%	$171,434,779
2	Hellboy II: The Golden Army	Universal Pictures	$3,188,120	- 14.2%	N/A	$41,443,875
3	Journey to the Center of the Earth	Warner Bros. Pictures	$2,652,429	- 2.6%	N/A	$26,394,778
4	WALL•E	Walt Disney Pictures	$2,463,661	- 4.5%	- 44.2%	$168,099,359
5	Wanted	Universal	$1,564,125	- 1.9%	- 42.2%	$115,613,470
6	Get Smart	Warner Bros.	$1,021,333	- 0.1%	- 36.5%	$113,607,836
7	Meet Dave	Twentieth Century Fox	$671,027	- 0.4%	N/A	$6,596,438
8	Kung Fu Panda	DreamWorks	$661,776	- 3.3%	- 43.4%	$203,500,614
9	Kit Kittredge: An American Girl	Picturehouse	$460,000	+ 1.1%	- 38.7%	$11,908,000
10	The Incredible Hulk	Universal Pictures, Marvel Studios	$319,995	- 3.2%	- 54.4%	$130,556,080
Box office data supplied by Exhibitor Relations