Fearless Forecast - Only New Movie Wins Weekend

As we outlined last night, the Michael Jackson documentary, despite all the media hoopla and claims for a record box office start, is not going to have a terribly memorable weekend. It will be number one, but over the five-day release period, This Is It won't break any records other than those for documentaries. In fact, if you balance out the number of theaters, Fahrenheit 9/11 would probably still have the best opening for a documentary based on a per-screen average for a number one film. But This Is It will significantly outpace everything else in theaters, and there's a good reason for it: Studios avoid Halloween. As we've seen with recent January and August releases, those dead zones that Hollywood thinks can't possibly attract audiences no longer exist; you can open a movie nearly any weekend and it could be a smash. Hence, This Is It against no other new competition will skate to an easy win. The most unlikely hit of the year, Paranormal Activity, will continue to do great business, although its best days are now behind it. While Halloween night usually gives bad returns, especially on a weekend, I don't see Paranormal suffering as much as other movies will, because it's kind of a Halloween activity at this point. It won't do three straight $20 million weekends, but it will perform well enough to land comfortably in second place, standing about eight to ten more days from breaking the $100 million mark. If you're thinking Saw VI might rebound and that last week's throttling at the hands of Paranormal was an anomoly, stop thinking that. Jigsaw's latest, while still profitable for Lionsgate in the final analysis, will far and away be the biggest loser of the bunch. It might make $4 - $5 million this weekend, taking its ten-day total to just north of $20 million. That's about ten million below what Saw V did in its first three days. Makes you wonder about the long-term plans for the franchise. There's not much else to report: Couples Retreat will inch up toward $100 million, and it should get there in maybe two weeks or so, Boondock Saints isn't in enough theaters to be really competitive (although I am interested in the per-screen average), and The Vampire's Assistant will become one of the year's biggest misfires. Its total haul might be in the $15 million range, and with a $40 million budget plus advertising costs, the fairly limited international release probably won't be enough to put this one in the black. Not by usual three-to-one ratios, either, just in terms of the raw numbers. That's not too common. The Top Five:
1 - This Is It ($51 million **Five-day total)
2 - Paranormal Activity ($15.5 million)
3 - Law Abiding Citizen ($9 million)
4 - Where the Wild Things Are ($7 million)
5 - Couples Retreat ($6 million)