Fearless Forecast: A Third Tea Party for 'Alice'

For about ten years, the box office had a new leader nearly every weekend. If you go back to the pre-Titanic era, it wasn't that uncommon to see a movie open at number one and stay there for a while, or open at number one, slip to number two or three, and then reclaim the top spot. But then studios started releasing bigger movies all the time and the summer and holiday seasons stretched out further and further, so there was increased competition every time you turned around. In 2007, nine movies held the top spot for longer than a week. In 2008 and 2009, seven did it each year. This year, three movies have already accomplished that feat, with Avatar winning all of January and Shutter Island and Alice in Wonderland taking four of the next six weeks between them. I think we'll surpass seven repeaters this year, and maybe even ten. Alice will win its third straight weekend, spurred by big 3-D/IMAX ticket sales, and again, nothing will come close to it. In all probability, Alice will hit $300 million by next weekend, after this week's performance pushes it north of $265 million. It's making six times what newer movies are earning on the weekdays, so it's not even a guarantee that How to Train Your Dragon will beat it next weekend (but it probably will). Why I bring up those historical references about repeaters is that Avatar and Alice aren't doing this against total lightweights. Some of it is that newer competition has underperformed, yes, but last week, Alice had four new releases, and this week it has three more. The point is, it's not doing this in a vacuum, which makes it more impressive. Can The Bounty Hunter, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or Repo Men cool off Alice at all? No. The Bounty Hunter will do reasonably well - around $20 - $25 million - and that just underscores how big a movie Alice truly is, because it has enough broad appeal to win comfortably over a star-driven action comedy, plus an adaptation of a popular kid's book, as well as an R-rated sci-fi action flick. And it's going to do it on one of the most active TV weekends of the year, thanks to widespread interest in the NCAA tournament. That's a lot of muchness. The Top Five:
1 - Alice in Wonderland ($39 million)
2 - The Bounty Hunter ($21 million)
3 - Diary of a Wimpy Kid ($14 million)
4 - Repo Men ($8.75 million)
5 - Green Zone ($6.5 million)

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