The box-office results are in, and I don't think there's any surprise concerning which film took the top honors this Memorial Day. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, distributed by Viacom (NYSE: VIA), took in $126 million over the four-day weekend at domestic theaters, according to Boxofficemojo. Taking into account Thursday showings, Skull has so far grossed about $151 million. These aren't record numbers as far as I know, but they certainly were high enough to displace Disney's (NYSE: DIS) Prince Caspian flick from the number-one position. The movie captured about $28.6 million at the multiplexes, good for second place; up to now, the Narnia sequel has a total tally of around $96 million.

Which is completely unacceptable to Disney shareholders (I'm one of the disappointed, and I wrote about my disappointment last week). Consider that the Memorial Day weekend is done, and that this is the second weekend for the project. To not crack $100 million domestically for a movie brand that was supposed to be strong considering the business that the first Narnia did back in winter 2005 should be troubling to Bob Iger.

At least Iron Man is around to cheer me up. The Marvel (NYSE: MVL) masterpiece is still in the top five at number three and has now enjoyed a $257 million take. I own shares in Marvel, so I'm glad the picture is offering some balance to Disney's relative flop. News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) What Happens in Vegas and Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) Speed Racer took up fourth and fifth place, respectively. I suppose I shouldn't complain; Time Warner shareholders must put up with the fact that Speed Racer hasn't even cracked $40 million yet. Maybe that's the true bomb of the summer.

At Comic-Con this year, the Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) announced its commitment to make all seven of the Chronicles of Narnia books into feature films, releasing one a year starting in May '08 with Prince Caspian. This decision follows the success of the adaptation of the first book -- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe -- which grossed almost $300 million.

This decision is not surprising, following the conclusion of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, which has no immediate plans to continue. Disney is predictably looking for its next goldmine franchise, and what better to use than a seven book series which already had a successful start?

The only question is whether the quality of production will suffer in the sequels from such an ambitious filming schedule, and after Disney pulled off the Pirates trilogy with such dazzling effects, I doubt that will be a concern -- although the quality of the Pirates scripts did fade down the stretch. At least with these movies, the writers will have a classic source to guide them.

I recently blogged about my concerns if Evan Almighty flopped this weekend.

I, as well as many others, would classify the $32.1 million opening weekend of Evan as a flop. Peter Sanders of the WSJ believes that Evan Almighty was the first "major pothole" in Hollywood's sequel-filled summer. He also put Evan in the same category as Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, by saying May's blockbuster "threequels" were all expected to fall short of their previous domestic sales numbers.

Could that be true? Looking at the numbers, Sanders has a good argument. That's only if you thought sequels should outperform the original. Other than Shrek II, most of the recent sequels made less than its predecessors. Even the Harry Potter franchise couldn't make a sequel that outperformed the $317.5 million earned from Sorcerer's Stone.