I like to pick on Nikke over at Deadline Hollywood a lot because sometimes she has the tendency to get suckered by her studio/network sources when they want certain information pushed out over the wire, such are the problems of using anonymous sources in the first place. Truth is, I go there a lot because she has great information on tracking that I don't, and I'm happily surprised to find that according to her, the star-laden animation out of DreamWorks isn't going to clean up this weekend at all.

I have early box office numbers for the top two movies tonight. I'm told Universal's American Gangster stole the show Friday by snatching $17+ million in domestic gross receipts at 3,054 theaters. The Imagine production ... should make "comfortably in the $40Ms" for the weekend and maybe even $50M. That makes thisbiopic drama the biggest R-rated motion picture opening in history for a movie that more than 2 1/2-hours long (beating Troy's $46.8M and Gladiator's $34.8M).

It's nice to be surprised when so often these things go exactly as they look at face value - crap is crap and you just can't hide it behind spiffy trailers and big names. It's funny though, that with only three new flicks opening this weekend that two of them are doing very well at the same time. I guess less competition makes it an easy going, but you'd figure it'd be one or the other, not both.

Check out Nikki's post for the big rundown and head back here on Monday for the top 5 list.

Updated: Looks like Dreamworks is getting sued for trademark infringement over the name "Bee Movie."

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