Fearless Forecast - Plan Comes Together for 'A-Team'

It won't be a weekend we remember for all time or anything, but the box office should finally recover from a month of bad returns, thanks to two movies that have modest aspirations. The A-Team and The Karate Kid are rockin' out the 1984 and audiences should turn up for both films. Not in huge numbers in either case, but it's not as though these movies cost $200 million (*cough* Prince of Persia). I have a hunch The A-Team will draw more attendance. Shrek Forever After still has a pretty good heartbeat and that might slow family business for The Karate Kid a little bit. Reviews won't matter in either case; both films have strong brand recognition and plenty of theaters to gobble up cash. Why A-Team has the edge, I think, is because outside of Iron Man 2's first couple of days, everything this summer has been a little leaden at the box office. It probably isn't going to soar to $50 million or anything, but it should be on pace to come in around $100 million for its entire run after the first three days. But that's when the reviews will matter, or more specifically, when the consensus opinion matters. If the movie's atrocious, the second weekend will plummet, and if that happens, a $30- $35 million opening won't get it past $80 million or so. Karate Kid could take the top prize, but I'll stick with the reasoning mentioned above. It won't be far behind, but I think there's still enough Shrek business to trip it up. And outside of those three movies, Get Him to the Greek might be the only thing north of $10 million this weekend. It is summer, right? Next weekend we'll see a big, big opening for Toy Story 3, and two weeks later it's Twilight and Last Airbender, so there will obviously be some headlines then, as well. The Top Five:
1 - The A-Team ($33.5 million)
2 - The Karate Kid ($29 million)
3 - Shrek ($16 million)
4 - Get Him To the Greek ($9 million)
5 - Killers ($7.5 million)