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Thursday
15Jan2009

Fearless Forecast - Clint Guns Down 'Valentine'

DateThursday, January 15, 2009 at 10:40AM
Though he'll be facing a lot of competition this weekend, with four new releases hitting theaters, plus the expected curiosity to see the Golden Globe winners in limited release, Clint Eastwood should emerge victorious at the box office again this weekend with Gran Torino.

We thought it was a possibility that he could last weekend, although we picked the younger-skewing Bride Wars. It turns out, Bride Wars was a slight disappointment in its debut and people were really drawn to the Eastwood flick; nobody pegged it as a $30 million debut in its wide release.

But because those are the numbers, don't expect a huge drop this weekend. The NFL playoffs are only on Sunday now, which is not the biggest day of the three, anyway. And there's no direct competition for Eastwood's audience. Again, he's aiming for a much older demographic. The people interested in this film aren't interested in My Bloody Valentine 3-D, on the whole.

However, there are plenty of people interested in the 3-D horror remake, and if there's a film that can knock off Eastwood, it's this one. One thing about the release: It's not exclusively in 3-D theaters, although in the record number of outlets showing a film in 3-D (just over 1,000), some are hiking the prices up a bit. But the 3-D houses account for a little less than half of the film's release, so it's kind of a wash, really. Still, the marketing blitz has been very good by Lionsgate, and I expect this to do really well with its crowd.

The other three new releases - Hotel for Dogs, Notorious, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop - simply don't have enough juice to be major threats for the top spot. I suppose it's possible that Hotel for Dogs does a couple million better than expected, and neither Torino nor Valentine hit their goals, but that's an unlikely scenario at best.

The Top Five:
1 - Gran Torino - $19 million
2 - My Bloody Valentine - $17 million
3 - Hotel for Dogs - $14.5 million
4 - Bride Wars - $13 million
5 - Notorious - $12 million

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AuthorColin Boyd | | in , , , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment1 Comment |

Reader Comments (1)

Gran Torino is the most enterteining film of the year.Gran Torino is the best film of the year.

Saturday, January 17, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterluis

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