And we're off! At the stroke of midnight, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull began screening on 4260 U.S. screens, and 12,000 more around the planet.

With a 4-day opening weekend poised to topple all previous box office records, we thought we'd celebrate the iconic treasure seeker's historic return with an Indy PlunderWatch gross earnings projections clock. Using a complex algorithm that carefully calibrates screen count, market research, other openings, and hyperbole divided by fanboy prattling, our calculations* suggests that the sequel has in just nine short hours of release already laid waste to current title-holder Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End's $US137 million take by well over nine-and-a-half trillion dollars.

*Margin of error: +/- 9.5 trillion.

• 'Jones' eyes box office bonanza [Variety]

After intrepidly (and only somewhat confusedly) parsing the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise yesterday, we've looked on in amazement as the phenomenon continues its global siege. To wit: If ever we actually wanted to see Harrison Ford return for a fifth Indy film, we can only hope it extrapolates the promise of the accompanying trailer for Indiana Jones and the Curse of the Gay Rabbi. Which looks suspiciously more influenced by the 1979 Harrison Ford/Gene Wilder vehicle The Frisco Kid, but still — it's not like George Lucas is going to come up with anything better. (via The Hot Blog)

While we're at it:

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Watching Shia LaBeouf recount for David Letterman the amusing circumstances surrounding his arrest last November at a Chicago Walgreens for drunken, public benzoyl-peroxide abuse, we were suddenly left wanting to know how—likable as he is—he so quickly ascended to superstar status. Well, that's the great thing about media-saturation campaigns riding the coattails of massive summer movie releases: Those kinds of wishes are easily granted. According to a profile in the new GQ, it all started when Steven Spielberg saw LaBeouf's Disturbia audition tape, and instantly cast him in Transformers and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That was easy! But just who is this charismatic, precocious, and ridiculously named young man? And from whence does he come? Not too far, as GQ reports—in fact, as close by as a travelling tubesteak sideshow in Echo Park:

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· There are 27 different movies in this Indy-themed swingstravaganza. (And at least one classic Activision Atari 2600 title.) How many can you name? [Black20]
· Dennis Farina was so preoccupied worrying about gels and liquids, he had a total brainfart about the .22 he was carrying through LAX security. [LAT]
· It seems a certain Chace Crawford is getting invited to George Clooney after-parties and mobbed by the Cruises, and Penn Badgley isn't. XOXO, Defamer Girl [NY Daily News]
· Isaiah Washington filed a complaint with SAG over Grey's Anatomy's use of his photo in a newspaper article about his character on last week's episode. [Reuters]
· Hey—unicorns!

· We continue with today's theme of leaked, bootlegged trailers of the summer's most anticipated blockbusters with the new Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, set to premiere before screenings of Iron Man this Friday. Dare we say, it's a vast improvement over the first. Indy's back, everyone! No, seriously. Indy's back—it just gave out on him. Medic! [indianajones.com]
· Is "closet chef" Jake Gyllenhaal planning on opening his own restaurant before he turns 30? Sign us up for one Dreamy-Eyed Tasting Menu with Naggy Girlfriend Wine Flight! [Big Hospitality]
· Good news: Roger Waters's pig has been found! Bad news: In pieces. Good news: Bacon for everyone! Bad news: It tastes like polyurethane. [MyDesert.com]
· Is Transformers 2 about to get a much-needed injection of menstrual-blood humour? One can only hope. [Cinematical]
· Hey—dogs into unicorns! [Archie McPhee]

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As if to say to the world, "You think Indy's too old? Well, how do you like these rippling, 8-pack apples?" as well as, "I'm smiling on the outside, but on the inside, my chest feels like it's being gnawed upon by 10,000 hungry rats," Harrison Ford took to the depilatory chair recently. It had nothing to do with Crystal Skull, but rather some pet cause that involves deforestation and a Spice Girl. Still, we'd hope his co-star and protégé Greaser LaBeouf will follow suit, with an Earth Day season pledge to submit himself to a Brazilian as a means of encouraging better sorting of compostables. [Access Hollywood]

Hard as it is to believe, after what seems like 19 endless years of false-starts and "Slowly Veering Lincoln Continental of Doom" jokes, we are less than one month away from seeing the fourth chapter of the Indiana Jones saga. The adventuresome archaeologist enters a far different Hollywood from the days when he first planted sunbeam-focusing sceptres in secret map rooms, however; studio sash-tightening has required its makers to defer their fees in exchange for that venerable Hollywood trade-off, a piece (and in this case, a gigantic piece) of the back-end. The LAT breaks down Crystal Skull's financial model:

Paramount spent about $US185 million to make the movie and will pay at least $US150 million to market it worldwide. The studio will earn a distribution fee of 12.5% of the revenue it receives from the film's release in all media, including theatres, DVD and television.

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It's been a rough week for you, the Internet-Enabled Movie Fan with Something to Say. Just a day after noted haimishe Luddite Barry Sonnenfeld's semi-hysterical vision of a Facebook-infiltrated culture in which Big Brother will monitor our every Twittered activity, comes a similarly technophobic EW.com conversation with the creative duo behind the Indiana Jones series (and possessors of 68.2% of all the world's wealth), Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Playing a sort of good cop/bad cop routine, Spielberg bemoans the eroding of the moviegoing experience by keyboard-tapping chatterboxes, while Lucas tempers all the grumpy-old-man talk by pointing out that the internet is also capable of producing some good things (e.g. an audience who actually cares what Indy has been up to after his 19-year sabbatical). We quietly slip in mid-conversation:

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Arguably the last Hollywood reach-around that still truly matters, it's hardly a surprise to see some of the world's biggest stars line up for their turn to get slimed at the Nickelodeon's Kids Choice Awards—a relatively minor price to pay to ingratiate yourself to a new generation of prepubescent fans, who'll come away viewing you not just as some relic steeped in old-man smell, but as certified lunchbox-adornment material.

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George Lucas is still traumatized by the sullen faces of Star Wars fans who filed out of the first preview screenings of The Phantom Menace, and, spotting its jittery director standing by the exit, spit, "You ruined Christmas, my childhood, and Life Day!" before whipping their crumpled comments cards at his head. So it's not terribly surprising to learn that the producer of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is taking a far more tempered, "Hey, Indy fans: Let's just try to remember this is just a movie...and the originals weren't even that great to begin with!"-approach to his latest revisiting of a devoutly worshiped franchise:

"When you do a movie like this, a sequel that's very, very anticipated, people anticipate ultimately that it's going to be the Second Coming," Lucas says.

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