Box Office - It's All About Tyler Perry

A big per-screen average of over $10,500 helped Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All By Myself make just under $25 million at the box office. That's over twice as much as it needed to make to win the weekend, and Perry's third biggest opening, although it's way behind Madea Goes to Jail, which put up $41 million in 2,200 theaters back in February.

But since his movies cost very little to produce, Perry has become one of the most reliable and profitable one man bands in the industry and there's no sign that he's losing any steam. The animated film, 9, slid into second place this weekend. It opened on Wednesday, so its total box office is a little over $15 million, but just looking at the weekend it brought in $10.9 million million, which is OK for the 1,600 theaters it calls home, but you have to wonder how well it can hold up over the next month. If it makes $30 - $35 million, will that be enough to keep Focus focused on alternatives to the big Pixar and Dreamworks animated product?

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Box Office - Tyler Perry Dominates Weak Friday

This weekend has become slightly unpredictable. Tyler Perry will make a little more coin than we thought - maybe $22 to $25 million - after a near-$9 million start for I Can Do Bad All By Myself. That's his second really big opening in a row, after a couple that were less stellar.

The thing we didn't see coming, though, was Sorority Row absolutely bombing. I mean hard. Next to Whiteout, the surprisingly decent horror flick is opening in the most theaters this weekend, but it appears that it won't even crack the top five at the box office. It made less than $2 million on Friday and might end the weekend below $5 million. Are audiences just slashered out after Final Destination and Halloween II? The new animated film, 9, will most likely lock down a distant second-place finish for the weekend. It wouldn't have been more competitive had it not opened on Wednesday, but we're still looking for a five-day total just south of $15 million, and that's not too great. It's OK for a movie on less than 2,000 screens, but I don't know if that's enough of a head start to make it profitable.

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Movie Review - '9'

9 Starring Elijah Wood, Christopher Plummer, John C. Reilly, and Jennifer Connelly Directed by Shane Acker Rated PG-13

You may not believe your eyes when 9 comes on the screen. The detailed animation is so rich and well-constructed that, for a fleeting moment, I forgot that I was watching a cartoon. We've come a long way since Steamboat Willie. It's hard to imagine this story unfolding with any other visual style. Of course, you may not believe your ears when you hear some of the dialogue in 9, which has a fairly standard man vs. machine theme and some imaginative character and story creations. However, when the time comes to propel that story from one scene to the next, the film loses its charm in what seems to be dialogue lifted straight out of a template from an action movie. Of course, the overwhelming majority of patrons aren't paying to hear 9 but rather to see it, and as far as that goes, this is a miraculous achievement. But movies aren't and cannot be isolated as one thing and not another. That's actually what sets them apart from just about every other form of theatrical performance or literature; it's such a synthesis of everything, from story to visuals to music. But director Shane Acker has created a terrific little universe here, populated by sentient ragdolls in a fight for their survival against the last remaining machines on Earth. Some time after an apocalypse brought on by machines revolting against their creators, a small population a "living" dolls - each a kind of mechatronic wonder of gears, old car parts, transistors, and more - has sought refuge in the remains of a gothic church. The leader of this group is called 1. He has the number written on his back. There are also 2 - 8, although 3, 4, and 7 are nowhere to be found at the beginning of this journey. And since this is 9, you can guess whose journey this really is. Because there are very human qualities to each of the dolls, 9 has more bravado and fight than the others. Of course, he hasn't been hiding out from The Machine for years and years. 9 is fresh off the assembly line, the apparent last creation of a human scientist. His mission is simple: Stop the machines. Beneath that mission, but not too far in the subtext, is answering the biggest of all questions: Why are we here?

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Fearless Forcast: Tyler Perry Wins All By Himself

I always forget when Tyler Perry has a movie coming out, perhaps because there's no chance I'll get to see it without finding a screening myself on opening weekend. I believe only two of Perry's films - the first Madea flick and whatever the relationship drama was after that - were screened for the press, and now that Perry doesn't need reviews, Lionsgate doesn't bother.

So he has I Can Do Bad All By Myself in theaters this weekend, and as much as recent Oscar nominee Tajari P. Henson might be a good enough reason to invite press reaction to the film, no dice. But it will win the weekend, which Perry usually does. Lionsgate has always done a good job positioning his films at relatively weak spots on the calendar, and there's no crime in that. Perry's latest will beat Sorority Row, the new R-rated horror flick, and Whiteout, the Kate Beckinsale movie with more scrapped release dates than reasons to see the film. There's some carryover between those audiences, which won't help either one of them, plus they share a sliver of the same crowd with 9, the animated movie that opened on Wedesday.

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Four Great Big Last Minute Images from '9'

The folks over at 9 have been very good to us over the past few months, and I think it's because we were one of the first websites to run a little story about Elijah Wood voicing a character in some weird-sounding animated flick based on the director's short film treatment a few years earlier. We even showed you the original 9 at that point.

So that's been almost a year ago now, and Shane Acker's 9 arrives in theaters tomorrow. I'm seeing it tonight - at 9:09pm, of course - so we'll have a review for you shortly thereafter. But in the months since we first wrote about 9, Focus Features has shared a bunch of stuff with us that we've passed along to you, and here are four beautiful images from the film. Obviously, we've had to cut them down to even fit on the page here, but if you click on any of them, I think the masters run in the 3000px range, so if you're into the animation style director Shane Acker is using, you can take a very, very close look. Enjoy:

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