Fearless Forecast - 'Bride Wars' Beats Up Clint

After a very shaky 12 months, 20th Century Fox is poised to have a breakout couple of months. It all started with Marley & Me, the studio's biggest hit in quite a while, and it could be succeeded at number one this weekend by Bride Wars. That's the new Kate Hudson-Anne Hathaway comedy that, despite a 0% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, will still attract tons of female moviegoers.

I actually think it will do better than a lot of prognosticators, having sat through a screening of the film asking aloud what everyone was laughing at. $20 million seems to be the ballpark figure, but I'm going to go a little higher than that. Fox could score the top two spots this weekend, with Marley finishing in second place, but I think Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, which is finally expanding to a wide release, is going to be a huge player this weekend. I don't remember if we've had a movie like this in a few years, but Torino has only played in 84 theaters over the past few weeks and has already made $10 million. That's an unbelievable amount of money given the circumstances. Milk has only made $17 million, and it's in at least three times as many houses, and has been out a month longer. I expect Gran Torino to have a very strong three days.

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Box Office - 'Marley' Hits $100 Million, Wins Again

I'll be curious to see what happens next for the top four movies of the week. For the second straight week, Marley & Me won the box office, with Bedtime Stories, Benjamin Button, and Valkyrie filling out the rest of the top four. With no new competition this week, the films were able to put up pretty strong numbers, with Marley & Me topping $100 million in ten day and earning another $24 million over the New Year's weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.

In fact, all four of last week's new releases are primed to make $100 million, as Valkyrie has already made $60 million and will be close to $75 or $80 million in another week to ten days. But I'm curious because there is competition coming; there are 14 wide releases hitting theaters within the next three weeks. It's not so much the quality of the competition - it is early January, after all - but the sheer numbers of movies that could make a movie like Bedtime Stories fade sooner than it normally would. We'll have expansions by several Oscar movies, including Gran Torino, The Reader, and the re-released Dark Knight, as well as horror movies The Unborn and My Bloody Valentine that are being aggressively promoted. Speaking of Oscar movies, they constituted nine of the top ten finishers this weekend on a per-screen basis. Defiance led the way with a whopping $60,000 per screen, about ten times as much as Marley. Gran Torino looks like it's on its way to being a huge hit; the Clint Eastwood film has made just under $10 million in four weeks...in a total of 84 theaters.

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Box Office - 'Marley' Stays on Top on Friday

A couple of days ago, we told you not to expect massive changes at the box office. There are no national releases this weekend, so even though there are some films expanding into more theaters, those Oscar contenders won't show up in the top ten for the weekend, although they'll have healthy per-screen averages, which is sometimes a better barometer of performance.

On Friday, Marley & Me continued its historic run. As analyst Steve Mason points out, it will probably be the biggest live-action dog film ever, and yes, that's a pretty healthy sub-genre. With another $9 million and change to start the weekend, the Owen Wilson-Jennifer Aniston flick has made over $90 million in just eight days, and will probably wind up being the biggest hit of 2008 for Fox, a studio that desperately needed a big finish. By the end of the weekend, Marley will probably be in the $115 million range, with plenty of road ahead of it. Look for a weekend total in the $25 - $28 million ballpark.

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Box Office - Second Verse, Same as the First

There are no new nationwide releases this weekend in theaters, meaning we're probably going to see a repeat of last week's top movies at the box office. Marley & Me has continued to do surprising business and will be over the $100 million by the end of the first weekend of 2009.

In fact, if we step back a little bit, everything in the top five is a little surprising. In addition to Marley, you've got Benjamin Button, which came out of the gates with a $39 million weekend and will probably be over $80 million by next Monday. That's good news for everyone involved, because three-hour David Fincher movies don't sound like box office gold. It still has a long way to go to make money, but as the only film like it at all on the schedule for months and months, the Golden Globes and the Oscar nominations will help create more buzz for it, keeping ticket sales afloat well into February. Bedtime Stories was the movie most prognosticators had winning the Christmas weekend: It's a family flick, it's got Adam Sandler. But it opened in third place over the four-day holiday, and though it's beating Button on the weekdays so far this week, it probably won't overtake the film this weekend, simply because it's an opening weekend kind of curiosity. People still want to see Button and will find ways to do it.

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Box Office - Big Debuts for 'Marley' and 'Benjamin Button'

As we always say after a holiday weekend, keep in mind that these numbers are slightly inflated because of the extra day, but there are still some pretty impressive figures over the Christmas four-day span, most notably the top film in the country and an Oscar front-runner.

Marley & Me is, point blank, a big ol' hit. It not only won a weekend it wasn't necessarily expected to but it did so with consistent numbers all weekend and a $51 million debut, according to Box Office Mojo . Assuming the film cost under $100 million, which is a safe assumption, Marley is going to make a bunch of money and could prove to be a great elixir for both Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, both of whom could use a major blockbuster. Bedtime Stories finished the three-day weekend in second place, slightly off the mark in terms of its pre-weekend projections, but $38 million is certainly a good enough debut, especially considering that this is the last film aimed at families for the next few weeks. It ought to have fairly strong business until mid-January. I think everyone is surprised by how well The Curious Case of Benjamin Button performed; usually, Oscar movies don't start this strong. The Brad Pitt drama actually made slightly more money than Bedtime Stories over the four-day session, but that's because of a much bigger Christmas day than was expected. Still, I think everyone involved has to be happy about a $39 million start for the $130 million epic.

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