Box Office - 'Witch Mountain' Wins While 'Watchmen' Fades

There was no major surprise nor even a major victory at the box office this weekend. Disney's Race to Witch Mountain opened with $25 million, approximating exactly what it was supposed to do in order to get to number one.

The Dwayne Johnson family film had a really strong Saturday, and though every case is different, when Saturday is the big day in the weekend, that's indicative of a movie that might hang around a while. Usually, for whatever reason, movies that have a stronger Saturday in their first weekends tend to have more staying power, as opposed to a Friday the 13th,which made $19 million on opening day but fell out of the top ten at the box office two weeks later. Watchmen rallied to take second place, although it would be more accurate to say that there wasn't enough curiosity in The Last House on the Left over the entire weekend to keep that horror remake in second place. You can hardly call losing two-thirds of your audience in seven days a success, and that's what Watchmen did, managing only $18 million in its second frame (compared to $55 million a week ago).

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Box Office - 'Last House' Racing 'Witch Mountain'

Although it's most likely not going to win this weekend at the box office, the big winner, in terms of pound-for-pound performance, just might be The Last House on the Left. The new horror movie remake finished in second place on Friday, a little over a million dollars behind Race to Witch Mountain, according to new estimates from Box Office Mojo.

Why Last House gets the edge, though, is because of its per-screen average. The film is playing in nearly 800 fewer theaters than Witch Mountain, and if it were in the same number of theaters, it would have earned over $7 million last night. But Witch Mountain did win Friday and should win the weekend outright. Its $6.75 million debut will likely translate into a three-day total in the mid-20s, while Last House will more likely end up in the high teens.

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Movie Review - 'Race to Witch Mountain'

Race to Witch Mountain Featuring the voices of Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, and Alexander Ludwig Directed by Andy Fickman Rated PG

It's hard to argue that any other movie studio is so closely associated with its films than Disney. Part of that has to do with a long, successful history with animated films, but the studio has been making live-action family films for over half a century. While you might not be able to remember which company logo comes before the featured attraction for Titanic or The Godfather, the exact opposite is true with Disney. Almost without fail, you can identify the studio that made Herbie the Love Bug and The Parent Trap. So when Disney remakes its own films, it has a natural advantage of familiarity. Unlike remakes of, say, 3:10 to Yuma, when two generations of moviegoers see the words "Disney's Race to Witch Mountain," that means a third generation will probably create its own memories and warm fuzzies. Or at least that's the plan. This new Race to Witch Mountain lacks nearly everything that made the original so successful 30 years ago. The premise is almost too simple to screw up: Two aliens (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig) crash their spacecraft in the Nevada desert, raising the suspicion of agents at Area 51. The aliens are looking for a specific Earth element, and in order to get it, they hail a cab in Las Vegas driven by one-time felon Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson). And then it's a race to Witch Mountain. Again, this is a hard concept to get wrong, especially for a family film. But Race to Witch Mountain is almost never entertaining, is filled with atrocious dialogue and surprisingly low-level visual effects, and in almost every way, fails to improve upon the first movie. And no, this doesn't have to have an Oscar-winning screenplay, but it should exhibit, oh, I dunno, competence.

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Fearless Forecast: Teenage Aliens Pick Off Costumed Heroes

Here's a little trivia for you: Last month was the highest-grossing February in box office history. I know it's not the top month of the year or anything, but $770 million in four weeks with no true blockbuster being released is quite impressive. Audiences made a couple of blockbusters, however, with Taken and Madea Goes to Jail, and their performance helped the first two months of this year outperform the first two months of last year by nearly 20%.

That hot streak will cool off a little bit this weekend, with one decent opening and one major event movie that should fall back to Earth in a major way. Race to Witch Mountain is the first family film since Coraline to open in wide release, and it should do about what these Disney flicks seem to always do - $25 million opening, $80 million overall. Watchmen had its chance, I'm afraid, and it didn't convert too many newbies. The verdict appears to be that you'll love it if you read the graphic novel, not so much (or not at all) if you didn't. We saw that reflected in last weekend's numbers, which peaked on Friday and struggled to justify the hype on Saturday and Sunday. This is really its last chance to make some significant coin. It'll just drown in competition beginning next week.

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Wall Street Downgrades Disney Stock to "Sell"

Here's something you don't see everyday: A doom and gloom prediction for Disney. Wall Street analyst Rich Greenfield of Pali Research says that recent bad luck (by Disney's standard) has led him to lower the stock rating from "neutral" to "sell," and he has dropped the 12-month price target on Disney to $12.50 a share.

Greenfield has done research on this company in the past, so he's incredibly familiar with its assets and trends. He says that the film division in particular is weak for The House of Mouse, and points to the slow business for Jonas Brothers: The 3-D Concert Experience and the relatively soft performance by Bolt as primary factors. He wrote, "essentially everything is going wrong at the same time, with the length of pain likely to extend further than we had previously expected." The analyst pointed out that Disney had shored up its theme park business in recent months, but only enough to meet a short- term economic crisis.

"The real problem for Disney becomes what happens if the economy does not begin to recover in the near-future, meaning Disney laps the benefit from these successful strategies leading to a continued slide in 2010 revenues and profitability; implying that 2009 will NOT be the trough by any means for the parks."

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