Weekend Preview: The Scare Games

This weekend's Scare Games pits the prequel to a beloved Pixar film against Brad Pitt's adaptation of the seminal work on fake zombie apocalypse history. Caught in the middle (again) is crime comedy The Bling Ring which expands nationwide this weekend.

Mike and Sully shouldn't have a very hard time outrunning some zombies on their way to the top of the box office. Twelve years ago this adorable pair of monsters scored an opening weekend of $62 million, squashing John Travolta and Jason Statham. They should be at least be able to recreate that success against Brad Pitt, though they might have a hard time reaching $70 million if audiences agree with the critics who are saying the film is more like Cars 2 than Toy Story 2. Since Monsters Inc.'s release, all but two of Pixar's nine releases have opened between $60 and $70 million. (Ratatouille opened to $47 million, Toy Story 3 opened to $110 million.) There may come a time when Pixar breaks out of that pattern, but Monsters University won't be the film to get them through the glass ceiling.

It really makes me sad to concede that World War Z isn't going to do as well at the box office as I would like it to. Along with the issues I mentioned in my June preview, the main reason I don't think it will do well this weekend is one that plagues many films: it can't decide who its main audience is. It looses hardcore horror fans by skipping the usual zombie gore in order to fit in a PG13 rating, but it won't be stealing many families from Pixar. Critics complain about it being too episodic, but Max Brooks fans will be disappointed by the total lack of faithfulness to the source material. Pitt's chances of reaching $50 million this weekend are pretty slim, but hey, so is surviving the zombie apocalypse and we know he was able to do that. So anything's possible.

Last weekend The Bling Ring stole $214,395 from five theaters. By Thursday it will pass $300,000 which should be a good launching pad for its nationwide expansion into around 650 theaters. It might have a shot at reaching $2 million, but $1 million seems like a safer guess at the moment.

Do you plan to spend the weekend pledging Oozma Kappa, or are you packing your survival kit and sharpening your lobo?

Tune in next week to see which is more laughable: Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy as cops in The Heat or Roland Emmerich's latest plot to destroy the White House in White House Down.

Weekend Preview: Can Nolan Save Superman?

Well it seems like I have missed a couple weeks...I guess I should have expected that after starting a new job and moving to a new town. Still no internet in the new apartment, so this post is brought to you by the generously free Wi-Fi provided by the inventors of the chicken sandwich.

But you're not here to listen to me blab about that, you want to know how much I think Man of Steel will make this weekend. In a word: beaucoup. For those of you who are already tired of this year's super hero madness, disaster comedy This is the End opened on Wednesday, while Sofia Coppola's crime comedy The Bling Ring is set to steal from five theaters on Friday and Richard Linklater's Sundance darling Before Midnight expands nationwide.

It doesn't take a crystal ball to know that Superman is going to easily win the weekend. The only question is whether the reboot is going to be successful enough to keep up with the new super hero big leaguers: Iron Man, Nolan's Batman trilogy, Raimi's high-grossing yet critically panned Spider-Man trilogy, and of course the king of all super hero films: The Avengers. The highest grossing Superman film so far is Superman Returns which grossed $200 million back in 2006. Considering that Man of Steel cost $225 million to make, there will be a lot of disappointed Warner Bros. executives if this doesn't out-gross its predecessors. As for its opening weekend, a gross north of $100 million would prove that Kal-El's seven year big screen hiatus (and nineteen year hiatus before that) wasn't long enough for him to be overshadowed by Tony Stark and Peter Parker. Unfortunately, I see an opening weekend around $90 million as a more likely outcome.

Seth Rogen's This is the End got off to a good start by grossing $7.8 million on Wednesday on its way toward a five-day start around $30 million. That number would align The End nicely with the opening weekends of some of Rogen's more successful outings, such as Superbad ($33 million), Knocked Up ($30 million), and Pineapple Express ($23 million).

Through three weeks in no more than fifty theaters, Before Midnight has so far grossed close to $1.5 million. The film's two predecessors (Before Sunrise, and Before Sunset) grossed $5.5 and $5.8 million respectively, though neither reached more than 500 theaters. Sony Classics plans to expand Midnight to almost 900 theaters on Friday with the hope that it will be the weekend's top counter-programming choice. If that happens, a weekend gross between $2.5 and $5 million is a possibility.

Lastly, Emma Watson tries on a very different role than the one we've grown used to seeing her in. The Bling Ring sees her as a member of the infamous crime group with the same name that robbed the homes of celebrities such as Paris Hilton, Megan Fox, Lindsay Lohan, and Orlando Bloom. Critical response has been varied since its premiere at Cannes, but everybody knows that usually doesn't affect box office grosses too much. Public interest surrounding Watson's involvement by itself could help the film bleed half a million from audiences this weekend, though it would take an act of Dumbledore himself to get it much higher than that. And if exit polling is as varied as the film's critical response, I expect the film to have a hard time recouping its $8 million production budget.

Do you already have tickets for tonight's midnight release of Man of Steel or are you waiting for the Sunday afternoon doldrums to set in before journeying to the movie theater?

Tune in next week to see if Mike, Sully, and their fellow students from Monsters University can win the Scare Games against World War Z.