The summer box office is believed to have inched past the $4-billion mark over the weekend, thereby surpassing the record of $3.95 billion set in 2004. (Last year's total was $3.63 billion.) It occurred over a late-August weekend, which studios still consider a time when young moviegoers are preparing to return to school and have had their fill of expensive Hollywood productions. (In fact, the new record was attributed to higher ticket prices; the number of tickets sold was well below 2004's.) As it turned out, the studios dumped five relatively low-budget films into the megaplexes and none could beat the better holdovers. The one that performed the best was the one that few analysts held out much hope for. Rowan Atkinson's G-rated Mr. Bean's Holiday raked in $10.1 million in just 1,714 theaters. That works out to about $5,900 per theater, slightly less than the per-theater average of $6,100 taken in by the No. 1 film, Superbad, which grossed $18 million in 2,948 theaters in its second week. (The film, which has already taken in $189 million overseas, is now poised to cross over the $200-million worldwide mark early this week.) The fourth week of Universal's The Bourne Ultimatum placed second with $12.3 million in 3,679 theaters (the movie was also tops overseas with $14.4 million), while New Line's Rush Hour 3 finished in third place with $11.5 million in 3,442 theaters.

Lionsgate's War, starring Jet Li and Jason Statham, which many analysts had expected would be the primary contender for box-office honors, went down to ignominious defeat, taking in just $10 million in 2,277 theaters. Although the martial-arts saga was not screened for critics in the U.S., they entered the fray over the weekend and administered some devastating blows. For example, Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe wrote: "You could fill a small junkyard with the films Jet Li and Jason Statham have made separately. Perhaps to cut down on waste, they've teamed up for a single trip to the dumpster." And Peter Hartlaub in the San Francisco Chronicle warned that people from his fair city hoping to catch a few glimpses of it in a big movie should be aware that "San Francisco looks like Vancouver" (where most of the exterior scenes were actually shot).

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Media by Numbers: 1. Superbad, $18 million; 2. The Bourne Ultimatum, $12.4 million; 3. Rush Hour 3, $12.3 million; 4. Mr. Bean's Holiday, $10.1 million; 5. War, $10 million; 6. The Nanny Diaries, $7.8 million; 7. The Simpsons Movie, $4.4 million; 8. Stardust, $4 million; 9. Hairspray, $3.5 million; 10. The Invasion, $3.1 million.

It turns out that when applied to movie reviews, the "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" gesture, which dates back to ancient Rome, is a trademark owned by Roger Ebert and the estate of Gene Siskel. It now figures in a legal battle between Ebert, who has been sidelined from his syndicated movie-review program At the Movies by illness for more than a year, and the Walt Disney Co., which now syndicates the program. On Friday, the Associated Press reported that Ebert had "exercised his right to withhold use of the 'thumbs' until a new contract is signed." Ebert quickly dispatched an email message to the wire service and other news organizations, maintaining that he "did not demand the removal of the THUMBS." (In a parenthetical note, he said that "THUMBS are [sic] capitalized to indicate a registered trademark; lowercase them [sic] if style requires.") Ebert insisted that during renewal negotiations the previous week, Disney made a first offer that "I considered offensively low. I responded with a counteroffer. They did not reply to this and on Monday ordered the THUMBS removed from the show." Disney has not indicated whether the amputation will be made permanent.

The American Federation of Television and Radio Actors (AFTRA), the primary union representing television performers, has joined the controversy over CBS's upcoming reality series Kid Nation, which has been accused of violating child labor laws. AFTRA said that it will launch its own probe of the series to see whether it violated the terms of its contract with the network. (The kids who participated in the series are not union members; however, the host, the announcer, and perhaps others are.) "We will take all legal and moral steps available to protect the rights of the performers and children on this program," Kim Roberts Hedgpeth, the union's national executive director, said in a statement. Meanwhile Paul Petersen, who played Jeff on The Donna Reed Show from 1958-1966 and now heads the watchdog group A Minor Consideration, has called the Kid Nation production "ghastly and a shame." In an interview with today's (Monday) Los Angeles Times, Petersen said, "I've never seen anything like this, in terms of wanton disregard for the lives of children."

Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" has filmed only one sting operation this year (versus seven last year) and the network is considering dropping the ratings-making series in which alleged sexual predators are lured to reveal themselves in front of hidden cameras, the New York Times reported today (Monday). According to the newspaper, the controversy over tactics used to capture the predators on camera have so alienated some advertisers that only six national commercials appeared in the most recent "Predator" episode last July 25. Andy Donchin, director for national broadcast for the ad agency Carat USA, said, "We're all concerned with what content we're associating ourselves with." NBC said that it has set up "an unofficial unit" to work with correspondent Chris Hansen on other projects incorporating the words "To Catch" in the title.

In a deal that today's (Monday) New York Times said may be worth as much as $75 million to South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the two will set up a production house in Culver City, CA to spread South Park material across the Internet, mobile phones, and video games. The deal calls for Viacom, which had previously forced YouTube to remove Viacom's copyrighted material from its site -- including clips from South Park -- to split ad revenues from the new Internet programming with Stone and Parker, an arrangement that the Times described as a precedent. MTV Networks President Doug Herzog, who, as head of Comedy Central, brought South Park to cable, told the Times: "If this is seen as a bold stroke, all the better, because it's going to take bold thinking to move ahead."

Dr. Vint Cerf, regarded as the "godfather of the Internet" for helping to develop the early technology that made the Internet possible, has forecast that the time is near when virtually all television shows will be delivered online. "You're still going to need live television for certain things, like news, sporting events and emergencies," he said at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, "but increasingly it is going to be almost like the iPod, where you download content to look at later." Responding to predictions by some scientists that the increasing use of the Internet to download huge video files could eventually lead to technical gridlock, Cerf said that he heard similar arguments when the Internet first emerged. "In the intervening 30 years it's increased a million times over ... We're far from exhausting the capacity." Meanwhile, almost as if it were responding to Cerf's prediction, Sony today (Monday) unveiled its first all-in-one PC/TV set capable of displaying high-definition programs on a 22-inch screen and playing Blu-ray discs. In a statement, Sony marketing exec Mike Abary said, "It's the ultimate showstopper for media lovers who appreciate hi-def performance and cutting-edge technology in a saving space design."