• Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns made $20 million this weekend, which wasn’t enough to beat Horton Hears a Who at the box office.  Drillbit Taylor opened with just $10 million; Variety vaguely says it’s “the second lowest” opening for Owen Wilson after The Big Bounce, but that statistic must exclude every Wes Anderson film and anything else that’s opened in platform release. Speaking of platform releases, The Weinstein Company has finally has a successful one to speak of: Under the Same Moon broke the record for the biggest opening of a Spanish-language film in the U.S. this weekend with $2.6 million on 266 screens.
• James Gandolfini will play the mayor of New York City in that remake of The Taking of Pelham 123.  The film hasn’t been shot yet, and it’ll still probably hit theaters before what was suppossed to Gandolfini’s first post-Sopranos project, Where the Wild Things Are.
• Regal Cinemas is looking to double its number of IMAX screens over the next two years, via a deal where the theater chain and the giant screen guys share both the cost of the expansion, and the resulting profits.

There’s an LA Times story this morning about how Paramount has promoted Apatow-com Drillbit Taylor around the fact that star Owen Wilson has done no interviews, in fear of having to answer questions about last summer’s suicide attempt. Instead of talking to reporters, Wilson taped “Drillbit-themed introductions to Fox’s Sunday-night prime-time lineup.” If there are three steps to managing a celebrity scandal––denial, confirmation, confession––the Wilson camp has chosen to remain mired in Step 1 for going on seven months, a stunning and curious feat in the era of confession as commodity.

After enumerating a number of projects fatally wounded by the unsavory off-hours activity of their stars, LAT writers John Horn and Gina Piccalo note in the last paragraph that Nine Months, the Hugh Grant film that was released just two weeks after the star was caught with a prostitute, grossed $70 million––according to this chart, more than Dumb and Dumber, Bad Boys or Babe, all of which spawned sequels.  The Hugh Grant scandal seems to represent a turning point in spin: by appearing on any show that would have him the day before his movie’s premiere and talking about the hooker incident directly and self-mockingly,  Grant was able to completely deflate the issue, successfully turning confession into commercial.

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• New James Bond film Quantum of Solace will open in France, Belgium and the U.K. before it comes to the U.S. on November 7. Why? This Variety story doesn’t say, but it does devote three paragraphs to Quantum’s exceedingly boring Bond boilerplate plot.
• There’s a new Tyler Perry movie opening this weekend, and if this Variety story is any indication, if it does well it’ll be the first time in three years that a Perry film opens at the top of the box office without the trades pretending like it’s a surprise. Also of note: Drillbit Taylor seems to be suffering from a post-Semi-Pro lowering of expectations.
• Doc maker RJ Cutler has plans to adapt the book Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America into a non-fiction film.
• Hot Docs has unveiled its lineup. Among the 173 films set to screen are Nursery University, about “the bloodsport of nursery school admissions in post 9/11 New York,” and Bloody Cartoons,  a look at “satirical cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed published in Denmark.”

I don’t know what I’m happier about, the fact that “Bust-Ass” from All the Real Girls has been getting a lot of supporting roles in big comedies (Hot Rod, The Heartbreak Kid, Pineapple Express, Drillbit Taylor, Tropic Thunder) or that he’s got the starring role in this little comedy, which ought to receive a decent theatrical run courtesy of Paramount Vantage. I’ll tell the truth, though; I hadn’t heard of The Foot Fist Way until I was directed [via ComingSoon.net] to the movie’s new “restricted” trailer. Apparently it was quite popular when it screened at Sundance in 2007, and it so far has a rating of 9.7 stars out of 10 on its IMDb page (though only 29 people have rated it so far).

This trailer does something interesting that isn’t seen much in the world of movie marketing. It employs a sort of peer-recommendation that we’re used to seeing on book jackets. The trailer mentions the fact that it has been watched by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay at least 20 times, that it has been quoted by them and that they obsess over it. The only thing it’s missing is an actual appearance from the pair, or at least a direct statement from them. I feel like something less second-hand would be more effective.

The Foot Fist Way is scheduled to open April 11.