Apparently Paramount was just downplaying their box office star when they said they were expecting ‘Iron Man’ man to do $60-$70 million. Sure, you don’t want people to point and laugh at you when your blockbuster makes $50 million less than you expected, but sources now say ‘Iron Man’ is currently out-tracking last summers’ ‘Transformers.’

While the ‘Total Awareness’ was bigger for ‘Transformers,’ the Robert Downey Jr. vehicle has a better ‘Definite Interest number’ (51%-46%) and a better ‘First Choice score’ (29%-23%). With an $8 million preview on Thursday, a $38 opening Friday, and respectively $37 million and $28 million for Saturday and Sunday, this will make for a $111 million opening weekend. And it will put the movie in the top 10 of best openings and the second place for a non-sequel opening.

Personally, I think it won’t do more than $100 million in its opening weekend, but I’m not sure how much hype there is for this movie in the US. You could consider the lack of big movies the last weeks, which would make for a hungry public. But with all the upcoming box office monsters and GTA IV just getting into the households, the public might not be that hungry after all.

With the summer around the corner, everybody is betting one the new ‘Indiana Jones’ to take the top spot. People in other countries may go out swimming or sunbathing, but the US has its bussiest season during those days, with 40% of the tickets sold between May and August.

Last year a whopping $9.62 billion was made, with summer blockbusters like ‘Spider-man 3,’ ‘Shrek the Third’ and ‘Transformers.’ But this summer isn’t short on potential box office wonders either. Here are the candidates with their budgets as found on the speculative internet.

• ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian’ ($100 million)
• ‘Speed Racer’ ($100 million)
• ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ ($125 million)
• ‘The Dark Knight’ ($150 million)
• ‘The Incredible Hulk’ ($125 million)
• ‘Iron Man’ ($186 million)
• ‘The Happening’ ($57 million)
• ‘Wall-e’ ($120 million)
• ‘Tropic Thunder’ ($150 million)
• ‘Meet Dave’ ($100 million)
• ‘You Don’t Mess with the Zohan’ ($75 million)
• ‘Sex and the City: The Movie’ ($65 million)
• ‘The X-Files: I Want to Believe’ ($35 million)
• ‘Get Smart’ (”biggest Peter Segal budget,” $100 million maybe?)
• ‘Hancock’ (??)
• ‘The Love Guru’ (??)

You don’t have to add up all these budgets to know it will be a good summer for Hollywood.