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Kim Hollis: The movies opening the weekend of July 9th are Despicable Me and Predators. What are your thoughts and expectations with regard to these two films?

Josh Spiegel: Predators opens on July 9th? Unless I've been living under a rock (very possible), Fox needs to get on this quick, because I wasn't aware it was coming up so soon. Despicable Me, on the other hand...well, I'm ready to stop seeing ads for that movie. I expect that will do well, unless Toy Story 3 and The Last Airbender are doing too well to get kids interested in something new. Predators...like I said, Fox needs to start marketing it.

Matthew Huntley: I suspect Despicable Me will be this year's Horton Hears a Who - open with about $45 million and finish somewhere between $150 and $180 million on the domestic side. The movie looks original and promising and Toy Story 3 will be entering its fourth weekend, so Despicable Me will have enough of the family audience to itself to become a steady hit.

As for Predators, the trailer is better than I thought it would be, but I'm not convinced the movie will be any good. It has an all too familiar feel and it's the kind of movie that could easily succumb to the same old cliches and make people angry. Supposedly, the characters in the movie are meant to be the world's dangerous killers, but I just don't see Adrien Brody that way. The brand name should allow it to open with $26 million or so (same as A-Team), but don't expect it to stick around for very long.

Jason Lee: If Despicable Me manages to open well, it'll have no reason to thank its first trailer, which made the film look like one long, extended Spy vs. Spy sequence.

Kim Hollis: I think Matthew's assessment of Despicable Me is a pretty good one. Horton Hears a Who range should be within reach, and also should make the studio pretty happy since they don't quite have the same "brand" of Pixar or even DreamWorks. They've been doing a really nice job with marketing in later weeks, making the minions the focus. They're pretty darned cute, and I think that along with having a fun character to latch onto, audiences could respond to the family aspect.

I'm not really feeling it for Predators, though. I think we've seen just how much audiences respond to Adrien Brody in non awards-bait films, which is to say, not at all. And while you might say that the Predators should be the draw for this film, I think you could have said the same thing for the mutant? creature? whatever? in Splice, and it came and went from theaters in a snap. Also, like Josh, I just haven't seen much by way of marketing.

David Mumpower: On a personal level, I think Despicable Me looks fantastic but in terms of anticipated box office, I seem to be on the low end of expectations here. With regards to Horton Hears a Who, we were talking about a well established Dr. Seuss property from the Ice Age team. Despicable Me is a new property from the ground up being distributed by Universal, a studio that has a sketchy history with animated releases. I think that an upper $20s opening weekend and a final result north of $85 million is the most reasonable scenario. I believe that international receipts will be the key to recouping the $110 million production budget. I'll be surprised if it earns the requisite domestic box office to justify that expense and I say that as someone who is very excited to see it.

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