It's only been five years since Mike Myers' last live-action film, but Hollywood's former comedy golden boy will have emerged blinking into the sunlight this morning brutally aware that a new era has dawned, after his latest feature bombed at the US box office.
The Love Guru, a comedy about an American Hindu self-help specialist who returns from India to the land of his birth, opened in fourth spot with just $14m (£7.5m). The convoluted plot, which features Myers looking for love online on the free dating website Devil Called Love, has not exactly had patrons flocking into theaters.
By way of contrast, Myers' last outing as Austin Powers, 2002's Goldmember, took $73m on its first weekend. The Love Guru, which has suffered from poor reviews, was beaten to the No 1 spot by another comedy, Get Smart, starring Steve Carell as secret agent Maxwell Smart. The film, which is an update of Mel Brooks' 60s spy satire, took $39.2m on debut.
Ironically, it follows a very similar premise to Myers' successful Austin Powers series. In second spot, the Jack Black animated comedy Kung Fu Panda hung on well with another $21.7m in its third weekend. It leapfrogged Louis Leterrier's reimagined superhero tale The Incredible Hulk, which dropped 61% in its second weekend to take another $21.6m.
The new Hulk is still running slightly behind its much derided Ang Lee-directed predecessor, but looks likely to overtake it in the next few weeks. The new Marvel studio's other summer superhero hit, Iron Man, passed the $300m milestone at the weekend.
The top five was rounded out by the M Night Shyamalan chiller The Happening, which took another $10m in fifth. There were no other new films in the top 10.
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