Steven Soderbergh seems to have found his new Clooney, as Matt Damon has helped the man snag a #1 spot twice now with The Informant! and as of this weekend, Contagion.

Hard to believe a film about a virus wiping out the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, and Laurence Fishburne could bring in $25 million worldwide in the first weekend, but that’s just what it’s done. Not terrible, considering the film’s budget was a measly $60 million (most of which likely went to the ensemble cast).

Following up in the top 5, The Help finally got knocked from its #1 spot for the first time in 3 weeks and finally hit the $140 million mark. In third, another new release, as the “Rocky of UFC” movie, Warrior, opened to a quiet response, with only $5.6 million.

In fourth place, political thriller The Debt managed to drop off significantly from last week and only pull in an estimated $5 million this weekend.

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Every massive summer blockbuster season has to have a few surprises. Last year, a little animated film starring Steve Carrell and Jason Segal called Despicable Me surprised everyone and grossed $251 million to date. That may be what we have on our hands with Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Apes managed to surprise everyone this weekend and pull in $54 million in the first three days here in the states with $77 million worldwide, and with 81% rating at RottenTomatoes you can expect the trend to continue through the workweek and possibly next weekend.

Coming in at #2, the true winner of last weekend’s bout, The Smurfs managed to pull another kid-friendly rabbit out with an estimated $21 million for the weekend, and a total $76 million.

Also hitting theaters this weekend, the body-switching comedy The Change-Up pulled in an estimated $13.5 for the weekend, which may not be such good news for Universal, who spent over $50 million for the production.

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Comedy Central seems to be pretty hungry for comedian-run sketch shows lately. They recently premiered the pilot of The Jeff Dunham Show to lukewarm reception, and another show starring Gabriel Iglesias and Bill Engvall is on the way. Earlier this week, yet another show was announced, in the form of a pilot for a show starring comedian Nick Swardson.

Swardson has made his way around the stand up circuit for years now, but most people will remember him from his supporting roles in Grandma’s Boy, Benchwarmers, and You Don’t Mess With The Zohan (he must be liked by the Sandler camp).

The network is apparently more than happy to add Swardson’s creativity to the growing camp of Comedy Central’s original programming. From The Hollywood Reporter:

“We love Nick at Comedy Central and even more importantly, our audience loves Nick,” said Comedy Central programming president Lauren Corrao.  “We’ve seen it in his movies, his stand-up, with his ‘Reno 911!’ character ‘Terry,’ and in the work he’s done developing Gay Robot.  We can’t wait to expand his creative voice into a sketch series.”

The series will include digital shorts, man-on-the-street segments and animation inspired by Swardson’s online character, “Gay Robot” (about a gay robot and his frat boy friends).

The show is set to go into production next month and premiere early next year. Until then, you can catch Swardson in the upcoming Adam Sandler comedy, Born To Be A Star, about an actor who moves to Los Angeles to pursue his destiny in porn.