The Big Money

That's right, old suit, I kicked your assYup, he’s huge: “Spider-Man 3” made $148 million over the weekend.

It set new records for highest single-day gross and the best opening weekend — both of which had been held by last summer’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” — and generally crushed everything else in theaters, making Warner’s counterprogramming of “Lucky You” look like a smart sacrifice play: Sure, it opened in sixth place, with a paltry $2.5 million, but nothing could possibly do well against the Spidey behemoth!

Of course, when your movie sucks to begin with, it’s nice to have an external force to blame for its failure.

I’m happy to see “Disturbia” still doing relatively well, though; after three weeks at number one, it finally slid down to number two, making it April’s big box-office champ, and still hot enough to draw audiences this weekend. More to the point, it’s just a well-made, intelligent thriller, and that deserves some notice.

Also, it sets up the narrative of Shia LaBeouf as this summer’s big discovery — he’s also in “Transformers”, and he’ll be co-starring in the “Indiana Jones” fourquel, assuming they ever start shooting — even though he’s been an actor worth following for a few years now.

Just how the system works, I guess.