Jack Black’s Po the panda outgunned Adam Sandler’s Zo the hairdresser. Black’s cartoon comedy “Kung Fu Panda” pulled in $60 million in ticket sales to debut as the weekend’s No. 1 movie, while Sandler’s salon romp “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” opened in second place with $40 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The movies combined to carry Hollywood to a big weekend. The top 12 films took in $172.4 million, up 32 percent from the same weekend last year when “Ocean’s Thirteen” led with a $36.1 million opening.

DreamWorks Animation’s “Panda” and Sony’s “Zohan” bumped off the previous weekend’s leader, the Warner Bros. chick flick “Sex and the City,” which slipped to fourth place with $21.3 million.

That was a steep 63 percent decline from its $56.8 million debut, but with a total of $99.3 million “Sex and the City” was just shy of $100 million hit status after only 10 days. (more…)

This summer an unlikely hero must defy the odds in order to defeat an evil foe and save the land from certain destruction. That hero is large. He’s portly. He has an appetite for destruction, and any other food you might have lying around.

He’s a panda bear. Oh yes — a panda bear. Prepare for awesomeness.

In the animated “Kung Fu Panda,” martial arts maniac Po (voiced by Jack Black) spends his days working in his father’s noodle shop, and his nights dreaming of being a great kung fu warrior. He idolizes the Furious Five – Crane, Mantis, Monkey, Tigress and Viper – the greatest kung fu warriors the world has ever seen. (more…)

The IESB has been supplied with tons of new film clips and featurettes from Dreamworks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda.

Kung Fu Panda” features Jack Black as Po the Panda, a lowly waiter in a noodle restaurant, who is a kung fu fanatic but whose shape doesn’t exactly lend itself to kung fu fighting. In fact, Po’s defining characteristic appears to be that he is the laziest of all the animals in ancient China. That’s a problem because powerful enemies are at the gates, and all hopes have been pinned on a prophesy naming Po as the “Chosen One” to save the day. A group of martial arts masters are going to need a black belt in patience if they are going to turn this slacker panda into a kung fu fighter before it’s too late.

Kung Fu Panda stars Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Ian McShane, Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, Seth Rogen, David Cross, Randall Duk Kim, James Nong, Michael Clarke Duncan, Dan Fogler and Melissa Cobb.

Kung Fu Panda opens in theaters everywhere on June 6th, 2008!

ET (Entertainment Tonight) has been doing lots of reporting on Angelina Jolie so I’ve embedded the videos for you all to see in this post. Just click the read more links to view the videos since they auto start. (more…)

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s twin girls likely will be fraternal, not identical.

Jolie mentioned this to me on Thursday night at the Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks party for “Kung Fu Panda,” in which she co-voices animated characters with Dustin Hoffman and Jack Black.

The stunning actress said “there was a line” on the sonogram that indicates her daughters are not going to be perfect copies of each other.

Jolie and Pitt are here in Cannes for many reasons, starting with her two movies in competition: “Panda,” and Clint Eastwood’s “The Changeling” (the latter debuts on Tuesday night). (more…)

I added almost 90 photos of Angelina arriving at the “Kung Fu Panda” Premiere and party and I still haven’t even scratched the surface on all the photos out there. Make sure you check back for the HQs as well as some candids and hopefully more video! All photos below are MQ.

GALLERY LINKS:
• 2008 Cannes Film Festival Premiere of “Kung Fu Panda”
GALLERY LINKS:
• 2008 Cannes Film Festival Party for “Kung Fu Panda”

Angelina glows at Cannes during the photo call for “Kung Fu Panda”. Check out the HQ images below.

GALLERY LINK:
• 2008 Cannes Film Festival Photocall for “Kung Fu Panda” [HQ]

Here it is! The now infamous video of Jack Black spilling the beans on Angie’s pregnancy! She looks incredibly happy and I’m so happy for her! Oh, and they talk about the film too. I’m SUPER busy uploading pictures from the photocall and photos from the premiere should be up soon. Enjoy!

Thanks to my amazing Gertie for the video. She’s hands down one of the best people I’ve ever known.

It’s twins for Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt!

In an interview that took place in Cannes on Wednesday with the “Today” show’s Natalie Morales, airing Wednesday night on Access Hollywood and in full on Thursday on “Today,” Angelina confirmed the baby news that has been rumored for months.

The twins will be the couple’s 5th & 6th children.

Angelina confirmed the news in a side-by-side interview with Jack Black — they are promoting their new Dreamworks animated film, “Kung Fu Panda.”

Jack was the first to let the news slip, and then Angelina followed up with her own confirmation. (more…)

Angelina Jolie has two good reasons to come to Cannes next month.

And maybe three. Or four.

Her animated film, “Kung Fu Panda,” from Paramount, will be premiering at the film festival. Now it’s been announced that Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” a 1920s-period mystery about a missing child that stars Jolie, her “Beowulf” co-star John Malkovich, Amy Ryan and Colm Feore, will be part of the competition slate.

This lends further credence to the rumors that Brad Pitt and Angelina — and their expanding brood — will be relocating to France for the impending birth of their twins, perhaps to a spiffy castle/chateau in the South of France they may have just purchased. Buzz is it’s the most expensive home they’ve yet acquired.
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The last thing the martial-arts fans behind “Kung Fu Panda” wanted to do was make fun of the genre they were re-imagining for the animated world.

So while their leading guy is a tubby, klutzy panda with Jack Black’s voice, the filmmakers have delivered a real kung fu movie in the guise of a cartoon comedy.

Directors Mark Osborne and John Stevenson said they intended their panda hero and his comrades — including a tiger (Angelina Jolie), a viper (Lucy Liu) and a monkey (Jackie Chan) — to be the animal-world equivalent of the Asian action warriors they admire.
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