If you read our recent article about the summer movie budgets, you know ‘Iron Man’ will at least have to make $186 million to cover its production costs. Add the marketing, distribution, etc. and you are in need of a pretty good opening weekend.

Paramount is confident though. They just revised their opening estimates upwards to $60-$70 million. I’m not sure if they’ll make that number, but I think it’s safe to say ‘Iron Man’ will at least make back the $186 million in its lifetime. It doesn’t feel like a hit, but I don’t think it’ll be lost in this crowded summer either.

The game isn’t over yet, but ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ already scored one point this Friday, doing an estimated $7.6 million at 3,151 theaters — that’s $2,400 per screen.

‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ wasn’t far behind, with $5.9 million at 2,798 screens. But if we do the math, we see it’s already doing less per screen. $2100 to be exact.

It still did a lot better than Al Pacino though. His ‘88 Minutes’ only did $2.3 million for the day. But nobody wasn’t expecting that one to do big numbers anyway. Too bad for its $30 million budget.

[update]
The fight has been fought, it’s over. ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ just won the weekend with an estimated $20.9 million. ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ still managed to make a respectable $17.3 million. Both exceeded most expectations.

Last week’s number one, ‘Prom Night,’ came in third with $9.1 million, making for a total of $32.6 million in the first 10 days.

With its $30 million budget ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ was expected to be an easy sell, but the comedy is now expected to do anywhere between $10-$30 million this weekend. The movie is produced by Judd Apatow, responsible for the failure of ‘Drillbit Taylor’, but also for the success of ‘Superbad’ and ‘Knocked up’.

The ‘crude comedy’ has to battle ‘The Forbidden Kingdom,’ with Jackie Chan and Jet Li, which is expected to have a good opening as well. Produced by Weinstein’s Asian branch, ‘The Forbidden Kingdom’ is opening in 3,151 theaters, while ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ will only do 2,798. That’s already a 12.5% bigger chance for a better opening by the Asian guys.