Warner Bros. on Monday was being accused of cooking the books Monday after it turned out that their box-office estimate for the opening weekend of Speed Racer was way off the mark. The studio had predicted that the film would wind up with $20.2 million in ticket sales, putting it in second place. "It's far from the first time a studio with an underperforming pic has overestimated its Sunday gross and avoided an embarrassing third-place finish in Monday morning box office stories," Daily Variety commented today (Tuesday). The estimated figure, not the final one, is the one that receives the most play in the press -- if for no other reason than that Sunday is ordinarily a light news day. Few analysts had believed the studio's estimate, given the movie's weak showing on Friday and Saturday. (Weekend estimates include actual figures for Friday and Saturday and estimated sales for Sunday.) As things turned out, the movie debuted with just $18.6 million -- a figure that will no doubt cause heads eventually to fall at the studio, which reportedly spent $250-300 million to produce and market it. Taking over second place was the debuting romantic comedy What Happens in Vegas from 20th Century Fox, which wound up with $20.2 million, the same amount that had been forecast for Speed Racer. Meanwhile, the second weekend of Iron Man earned $51.2 million, more than the debuts of Vegas and Racer put together, keeping it in first place.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Media by Numbers (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date): 1. Iron Man, Paramount, $51,190,629, 2 Wks. ($177,825,024); 2. What Happens in Vegas, Fox, $20,172,474, (New); 3. Speed Racer, Warner Bros., $18,561,337, (New); 4. Made of Honor, Sony, $8,116,323, 2 Wks. ($26,791,494); 5. Baby Mama, Universal, $6,225,790, 3 Wks. ($40,836,370); 6. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Universal, $3,837,240, 4 Wks. ($50,781,745); 7. Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantánamo Bay, Warner Bros., $3,106,424, 3 Wks. ($30,667,308); 8 . The Forbidden Kingdom, Lionsgate, $2,169,323, 4 Wks. ($48,530,104); 9. Nim's Island, Fox, $1,463,622, 6 Wks. ($44,395,857); 10. Prom Night, Sony, $1,012,986, 5 Wks. ($42,785,107).

Sex and the City: The Movie had its world premiere in London Monday night, and the reaction of the audience may have been a lot more enthusiastic than those of the critics. Will Pavia of the Times acknowledged as much. After outlining numerous complaints about the film ("It can feel like a never-ending dinner party: however pleasant the courses, after a while you can hardly eat another one") Pavia remarked, "None of these problems seemed apparent to the women who sat around me ... laughing and weeping in quick succession. After a while I began to reason like one of the characters: maybe the problem was me." The Sun observed, "There were oohs and aahs, cheers, laughter -- and more than a few tissues dabbed on eyes. Sex and the City will give its legion of female fans what they want." And Celia Walden in the Daily Telegraph concluded: "One thing's for sure: fans of the series will lap this film up. It was coarse, sentimental, and outrageously materialistic -- just as we hoped and expected it would be."

IMAX's decision to move from film to digital projection systems in its giant-screen theaters is hitting its bottom line hard. In its SEC filing on Monday, the Canadian-based company reported a net loss of $10.3 million during its first quarter, versus a loss of $4.7 million during the same period a year earlier. Nevertheless, co-CEO Richard Gelfond said that the company is on track to open 20 new digital theaters in the third quarter and another 30 by the end of the year. He also indicated that the company has a strong slate of movies that have been converted to the IMAX format and are set to debut this year, including Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Kung Fu Panda, The Dark Knight, and the latest Harry Potter sequel.

Officially introduced Monday as the successor to Conan O'Brien on NBC's Late Night when O'Brien moves over to the Tonight show next year, Jimmy Fallon joked that his elementary school principal, Mr. Nostradamus, had listed him in his kindergarten yearbook as "most likely to take over for David Letterman." As many people are aware, Mr. Nostradamus has been a bit off with other predictions over the years, but TV writers had been predicting for weeks that Fallon would be named Late Night's host (and, of course, Letterman did indeed once host the show himself, jumping to CBS after the powers-that-be at NBC passed him over for Jay Leno to succeed Johnny Carson.) Still up in the air is the question of what will happen to Leno when the game of musical chairs plays out next year (precisely when that will be has not yet been disclosed). At Monday's news conference, NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman said that he was looking to find an inducement to keep Leno at NBC, but he acknowledged that he might not be able to do so. "I think it's a reach," he said.

The Federal Communications Commission may fine toy retailer Toys 'R' Us $248,000 for "willfully and repeatedly" violating a requirement that they place a label on analog-only TV sets warning consumers that they will not be able to receive signals on them from February. The FCC said that it had issued eight warnings to the toy chain warning that labels in large type must be prominently displayed next to all analog-only sets. The commission also proposed a fine of $216,000 against another retailer, Value City, which had previously received two warning notices.

While unions and studios continue wrangling over how revenue from Internet screenings of TV shows and movies should be divvied up, a new national survey commissioned by Entertainment Weekly magazine indicates that hardly anyone is watching shows online. The survey concluded that just 1 percent of viewers most often view TV shows by downloading or streaming them. That compares with the 60 percent who still watch all their TV shows the old-fashioned way -- at the time they are transmitted. Another 9 percent watch shows via their DVRs later in the day, while 14 percent do so later in the week.

Apple, which said "no" to NBC last December when it demanded flexible pricing for programs sold on Apple's iTunes store, is now saying "yes" to HBO. Details were sketchy, but published reports said today (Tuesday) that episodes of HBO shows including The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Deadwood would be priced above the $1.99 that Apple ordinarily charges for TV episodes. It was not clear whether Apple would now also accommodate NBC's demands for flexible pricing and welcome it back into the iTunes store.

Barbara Walters says that she can identify with the current tribulations of Katie Couric because she went through a similar experience when she herself left the Today show to co-anchor ABC's nightly newscast 30 years ago. "I had great difficulties, and it was a very difficult, unhappy experience," she told Larry King on his CNN talk show Monday night. "I talked to Katie because Katie and I are friends, and I know that she's not sorry she left. ... And Katie's going to be fine. She is such a talent. If she wants to stay in the news, she can. If she wants to come off and do specials. If she wants to do 60 Minutes. If she wants to replace you in about ten years."

A television station in Idaho Falls, ID (pop. 57,000) is using a relatively low-cost system that allows it to transmit live coverage of local news events via the Internet. As reported by Corey Bergman on his Lost Remote blog, station KIFI-TV uses a technology called WiNG (Wireless Internet News Gathering) that allows it to provide "near broadcast quality" coverage without incurring the costs of remote equipment used in major markets. The technology, station GM Mark Danielson told Bergman, "is simple and dependable for our staff to use."

Frustrated by a writers' strike which forced it to postpone many of its development plans for the fall season, ABC announced that it will only air one new drama in the fall, David E. Kelley's Life on Mars, a time-travel tale about a police officer who is plunged into 1970 America from the current time. ABC will also air the final season of Scrubs, which was dropped by NBC. It is produced by ABC Studios, formerly Touchstone TV, a corporate sibling of ABC. Also making the lineup for the fall is the new Ashton Kutcher reality series Opportunity Knocks.