Fearless Forecast - Everyone's Into 'Not Into You'

It's the first really competitive weekend of 2009, with another one on the way next week. Four films enter the fray in wide release, and the shwodown at the top will be between the comedies The Pink Panther 2 and He's Just Not That Into You. Expect Jennifer Aniston to have her second number one opening in two months, as the womenfolk flock to see Into You, which also stars Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Connelly, Ginnifer Goodwin, and some guys. Not that they matter here. Will this do Sex and the City business? No, but as a general rule, romantic comedies with plenty of star power always do well out of the gate. That pushes The Pink Panther 2 into second place, although it will still perform quite well, considering the first movie was more offensive than kiddie porn. Steve Martin's been promoting the hell out of it, and audiences haven't caught on to his scam; he's made three decent movies since Parenthood, which means that over 15 of them during that span are trash. Then we've got the rare Dakota Fanning double shot. One of the more intuitive kid actors ever has two movies in theaters this weekend, the sci-fi action flick Push and the 3-D CGI and stop-motion animation extravaganza, Coraline. Collectively, they should do pretty well this weekend, but they probably won't be big hits. I'm curious to see how Taken does in week two. Word of mouth should help the Liam Neeson movie hold a significant amount of last weekend's figures. The Top Five:
1 - He's Just Not That Into You ($26 million)
2 - The Pink Panther 2 ($21 million)
3 - Taken ($13.5 million)
4 - Push ($11.5 million)
5 - Paul Blart: Mall Cop ($8.75 million)