Fearless Forecast - 'Iron Man 2' Is Indestructible

This could be an historic weekend at the U.S. box office. It isn't so much that Iron Man 2 has a chance to break The Dark Knight's three-day record of $158 million (although that is a real possibility) but rather that such a huge percentage of the total business will go to one movie.

There's a likelihood that Iron Man could make as much as $140 million or so more than the second place movie, Nightmare on Elm Street. Has there ever been that big a disparity? No. The Dark Knight holds that record, too, at $130.6 million, and if the early indicators hold out, Iron Man is headed for at least $150 million while Elm Street will be lucky to crack $13 million. So it could be a photo finish with the record books. In fact, because Iron Man will open on 4,380 screens and will have about 2,500 midnight shows and big IMAX revenue, there's plenty of reason to buy that the sequel could do as much as $160 million, and a lot of that has to do with the total lack of competition. The top ten movies at the box office on the weekdays are managing about $5 million between them, so where is the push back against Iron Man? It ain't.

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'Nightmare on Elm Street' Sequel Already Planned

We wondered if one good day of box office performance would be enough to lead Platinum Dunes and Warner Bros./New Line to move forward with a sequel to Nightmare on Elm Street. Apparently, it is. Film School Rejects says plans are already underway for another Nightmare. 3-D? Do you even have to ask?

With an estimated $35 million budget and a $33 million debut, you might wonder why a sequel would be problematic. Simple: Last year's Friday the 13th did more with less and it's not getting a sequel at the moment. The differences in dollars break down like this: Jason cost $19 million and made over $40 in its opening weekend and managed almost $100 million worldwide. Even if Elm Street approaches that much, the profit margin is substantially lower, so where's the logic? And let's not get too caught up in a $33 million start; half of that was Friday, and I think this movie will be lucky to make another $33 million domestically moving forward, based on how quickly these horror remakes fall off.

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Box Office - 'Elm Street' Wins Easily, Fades Early

We mentioned ysterday that the trend for horror movies is to start strong on Friday and fall off quickly. And the reason we brought that up is because Nightmare on Elm Street made almost $16 million on Friday...and now it looks like Elm Street made that much on Saturday and Sunday combined. See?

Yes, the new Nightmare easily won the weekend, and even if the numbers adjust themselves when the final results are tallied tomorrow, it's not likely that this remake will show a lot of promise on Saturday and Sunday. After $15.8 million on Friday, Elm Street dropped in the $10 million range on Saturday and then lost another $5 million on Sunday. So it's one-and-done here, and not just because industry projections have Iron Man 2 making as much as $150 million next weekend. Elm Street would struggle to put up much more than $15 million without any competition a week from now. Makes you wonder if a sequel will happen; Platinum Dunes reportedly isn't moving forward with another Friday the 13th flick, and it did much better in terms of actual dollars and in per-screen average, so more Elm Street doesn't seem like an inevitability.

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Box Office - 'Nightmare on Elm Street' Opens Strong

With nothing in its way, A Nightmare on Elm Street tooks to completely dominate the weekend box office. Yesterday was huge - $15.9 million - but a look at Thursday's midnight numbers (an apparent horror movie record $1.6 million) indicate that a big start was probably in the cards.

Here's an interesting stat: The rest of the top ten only made $16.3 million combined, so we'll see if Elm Street can pull off the rare feat of outgrossing the rest of the top ten for an entire weekend. Probably not, because horror movies almost always peak on Friday, but even with that knowledge, Elm Street is poised to rake in at least $35 million.

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Movie Review - 'A Nightmare on Elm Street'

A Nightmare on Elm Street Starring Rooney Mara, Kyle Gallner, and Jackie Earle Haley Directed by Samuel Bayer Rated R

As any Sin City tourist already knows, Las Vegas is overflowing with celebrity impersonators. For a meager cover (or maybe not), you can see a guy dressed like Elvis, Prince, or even Cher belt out familiar tunes. But that's all it is, and no matter how good the stage show is, it's still a phony, in part because that's how the shows are sold. Where it actually counts, A Nightmare on Elm Street is just like that. Trading more on a familiar name than its own merits, the new horror remake gives us some of Freddy Krueger's classic cuts (pardon the pun), but you never believe you're watching the real thing. This is, obviously, a remake of the 1984 horror classic by Wes Craven. That film introduced the world to one of the most enduring villains in all of cinema, Robert Englund's Freddy Krueger. And the story behind the film is even more interesting: Craven read accounts of Cambodian refugees in Los Angeles in the 1970s who began complaining of disturbing nightmares. Some refused to sleep, and others mysteriously died in their sleep. What a great springboard to a killer that haunts you in your dreams. Unfortunately for the new installment, the originality is all spoken for. There are a few nice additions and a few that simply don't add as much as they should. But what's really missing, just as a film trying to make its own way in the horror genre, are legitimate tension and thrills. The opening sequence, featuring one teen's quick downward spiral into a horrific dreamscape ends with a bang (or more accurately, a slash), setting the table for the story that follows. A group of the teen's friends soon realize they're all having the same dream, and they fear that if they fall asleep they, too, won't wake up. Director Samuel Bayer presents the characters almost in chapters, overlapping them ever so slightly. The first teen to catch Freddy's gaze is Kris (Katie Cassidy). Those who are new to the franchise will get a good primer on how Freddy operates here, and the Kris section of the film is probably when Elm Street is its most consistent. But soon, the other teens have to be terrorized in their sleep, so Jesse (Thomas Dekker), Quentin (Kyle Gallner), and Nancy (Rooney Mara) are thrown into the mix. They all suspect their shared fears aren't coincidental, but nobody can explain what the connection might be. They each get visited and tormented by a burned-beyond-recognition man in a fedora name Freddy (Jackie Earle Haley), but why him and why them?

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