Dave, meet Hellboy. Hellboy, beat Dave.

By Steven Zeitchik

Never underestimate the fanboys and girls. We didn't need the lesson but we got it anyway, and just weeks before Comic-con, no less, as "Hellboy 2" pulled in pulled in a whopping $36 million this weekend. With those numbers, the off-killter and humorous pic about an antihero -- trailers emphasized both the action quotient and the character's goofiness -- pulled in harcore, it pulled it casual. And Guillermo del Toro has now averaged $30 million opening weekends for his last three English releases, all of them midrange genre pictures. Forget his atristry, is there a better box-office value working today?

Among other new releases, Walden Media seems to be back on the right track -- and not affected nearly as much by the New Line absorption as some felt -- with a solid $21 million for "Journey to the Center of the Earth." And Eddie Murphy says he's thinking of hanging up the acting cleats in a few years; after "Meet Dave," we don't imagine too many will protest, and that includes the bean counters. The whose biggest claim to be fame may be those ridiculous highway ads barely got to $5 million.

But as ubiqutious as those Dave-insider-the-ear-of Dave ads were, that's how quiet another movie is, with exactly opposite results. Watch out, in other words, for "Tell No One." Guillaume Canet's twisty, epic-length French thriller pulled in a remarkable $13,000 per-screen in 18 venues -- a downtown New York screening was packed on a Sunday night -- and in its second week of extremely limited release (with a not-exactly-lavish P&A budget from micro distrib Music Box), the pic is already more than halfway to $1 million...or 10% of "Meet Dave."