Fearless Forecast - 'Dragon' Breathes Fire Again

Several weeks back, I hypothesized that we may be entering a new phase in box office charting, that the era of the Blockbuster Of The Week may be disappearing. There's more evidence of that this weekend, which we'll discuss in a moment. First, here's what I wrote about a month ago:

"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."

Since then, Clash of the Titans repeated and now How to Train Your Dragon looks to pull off the incredibly rare repeat performance four weeks after it debuted at number one. So that's five repeat winners in less than four months. And we've still got Iron Man, Toy Story 3, and Twilight to come this summer, all of which could have two-week stays at the top. The last time we had ten perform that trick was 2004, with 11 repeaters. In 2000, there were 15, if you can believe it. And every year, it happens more frequently in November and December, so expect this year to probably match that total. So how is Train Your Dragon going to vault back to number one a month later? There hasn't been a movie to debut at number one, go away, and come back as many as four weeks later in over a decade, so the 3-D CGI family movie could be breathing rare air this weekend. We're fortunate to have seen this movie's remarkable staying power over the past few weekends, nearly winning last weekend against Kick-Ass. Supposing the same kind of drop that it's been experiencing, Dragon could very well top the two new releases, The Losers and The Back-Up Plan. Both films are wide releases (about 3,000 theaters for The Losers at last count versus roughly 10% more for Back-Up), but neither has unstoppable buzz. Kick-Ass seemed to have that and only mustered $20 million. Last week's number one and The Losers will fight for the same audience, with The Losers winning the battle but maybe not the war. It could do as well as $17 million or so, but I think around $14 million sounds better. The Back-Up Plan could or could not find the female audience. If it does, the numbers still won't be terrific because it will only snare J-Lo fans and women who hear the biological clock ticking. In other words, the 18-24s won't be interested, and women over 40 probably won't be, either. Lopez isn't a movie star so she won't attract average moviegoers just because she's in this. Lots of commercials, yes, but the one-star rom-com model isn't in vogue right now, so I predict a pretty slow weekend for this one. And Kick-Ass will plummet about 50% from last weekend, meaning it would be well off the pre-release pace predicted here and elsewhere. Add all that up, and guess what wins? The Top Five:
1 - How to Train Your Dragon ($14.7 million)
2 - The Losers ($13.8 million)
3 - The Back-Up Plan ($13 million)
4 - Date Night ($10 million)
5 - Kick-Ass ($9.4 million)