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Welcome to another Reject Report and yet another weekend featuring a Marvel comic-book hero. Aren’t you fed up yet with Marvel comic book heroes? Well, the folks in Hollywood and at Marvel Studios don’t seem to think so, as The Incredible Hulk rolls out Friday only weeks after the big success of that other Marvel hero, Iron Man.

But it has a battle on its hand, on two fronts. For one, The Incredible Hulk is doing battle with M. Night Shyamalan’s latest release The Happening, which is also rolling out. But it’s also doing battle with the infamous Ang Lee version of Hulk that was released in 2003 and which all the die-hard movie buffs and fanboys think was a pathetic piece of junk. So this new movie is battling the ghosts of Hulk movies past.

Anyway, let’s not waste any time and look at what is in store this weekend, starting with our jolly green friend.

The Incredible Hulk is the second major release from Marvel Studios (after Iron Man). It’s directed by Louis Leterrier and stars Ed Norton, Liv Tyler, and Tim Roth. Norton plays Dr. Bruce Banner, a man who falls victim to a genetic accident that turns him into this rampaging, green, bad-tempered Incredible Hulk. In this movie, Banner is on the run from the corrupt General Ross (William Hurt) who is after him. Roth plays Emil Blonsky, a.k.a. the Abomination, who is voluntarily injected with the same formula that turned Banner into the Incredible Hulk in the first place. Except this time it turns Blonsky into an even worse creature. So Dr. Banner has a choice to make: either continue to hide in the shadows, or accept being the Hulk in order to save the day.

The Incredible Hulk is slated to open in roughly 3,500 theaters, which is a good number but not a massive amount of screens. This movie is seen as a bit of a reboot or reimagining of the Hulk franchise after what was seen as a total debacle from the first Ang Lee effort. The problem for this latest Incredible Hulk movie is the stench left over from Hulk. We have seen nothing but angst from the vast fanboy community out there, and a lot of worry about what the latest effort is going to look like. Well, the good news is that this movie looks like it is going to be better than the first one. If the buzz turns out to be as good as what I am now hearing, the box office should turn out OK after all. But I must say, it’s been a big question mark for a long time, the box office for this movie.

What ultimately makes my prediction of the opening weekend easier is the fact that as bad as the first Hulk movie was, it still made something like $62 million its opening weekend! I have to think this latest Incredible Hulk effort will do at least as well. I am calling $63 million for The Incredible Hulk. I dunno if it will hold off Kung Fu Psnda and these other movies in the weeks ahead — I still see it dropping quite a bit — but I think things should be OK based on what I hear about the tracking, which is supposed to be pretty good.

Next is The Happening, which is from M. Night Shyamalan, the man who brought you such movies as The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, Lady in the Water, and other stuff. This one stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, among others. It’s about this pandemic that spreads throughout the United States. At first people worry that it’s a terrorist attack, but it turns out that this pandemic is causing people to slur their speech and jump off of buildings and so on. Basically it’s about these people trying to flee the pandemic.

You know, it sounds similar to these zombie movies to me, these ones about these pandemics. Aren’t you fed up with these movies about pandemics? Apparently the rumors about the tracking for this movie indicate a not-so-great weekend at the box office. I have to say $25 million looks like the likely finish for this movie. M. Night Shyamalan has his fans, but I just don’t see this one doing rip-roaring business.

By the way, I am not hearing very good things about either Get Smart or The Love Guru, next week’s efforts. I read Jeffrey Wells’ website Hollywood Elsewhere that the tracking for these two movies was terrible! Love Guru I can understand — it truly looks like absolute rubbish — but Get Smart? Last I heard Get Smart was going to open in 3,700 theaters. That’s a lot of theaters, folks. I have a hard time believing Get Smart will bomb in that many theaters. I’ll have a better idea come next week.

So here is how I see the box office shaking down this weekend.

That’s it for now! Back at the end of the weekend with the rundown on what damage the green Hulk inflicted on the box office.