Weekend Preview: Not Leo's Oscar

This weekend was originally going to be dominated by The Wolf of Wall Street, but Paramount thought Scorsese's three hour cut was a little too long and they pushed him back to Christmas day so the film could be cut down to a friendlier length. That leaves this to be a pretty quiet weekend, with The Best Man Holiday the only new nationwide release. Malcolm D. Lee's The Best Man sequel debuts in 2,024 theaters this weekend, while Alexander Payne's Nebraska starts its limited release in four theaters.

There's no question that Thor is going to reign over the box office again this weekend. The latest entry in Marvel's Phase Two hammered up an impressive $85 million last weekend domestically and has already earned around $250 million at the foreign box office. With very good word of mouth and virtually no competition, I expect the god of thunder to bring in another $50 million this weekend.

The Best Man Holiday will definitely be the highest grossing new release, but that doesn't mean much this weekend. Back in 2009, The Best Man opened to $9 million from around 1,300 theaters and went on to gross $34 million domestically. Holiday should be able to beat that gross, especially now that it doesn't have to compete with Wolf, but I don't think it will have a chance of getting past $15 million.

Alexander Payne has made quite a name for himself both at the box office and critically. His last three films all grossed over $60 million domestically: 2002's About Schmidt ($65 million), 2004's Sideways ($71 million), and 2011's The Descendants ($82 million). He has also received six Oscar nominations, including two wins for his screenplays of Sideways and Descendants. He seems likely to continue that trend with this weekend's Nebraska. Schmidt and Sideways opened in four and six theaters respectively and both earned above $200,000 for their opening weekends. Descendants opened to $1.1 million, but that was from 29 theaters. I think $200,000 is a reasonable expectation for Nebraska this weekend.

Also opening this weekend:
12-12-12 - two theaters;
Charlie Countryman - fifteen theaters;
The Christmas Candle - five theaters;
Dear Mr. Watterson;
Faust - two theaters;
Remnants.

Tune in next week for the sparks of revolution in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Vince Vaughn's latest comedy misstep in Delivery Man, and Judi Dench's Oscar bid in Philomena.