Weekend Forecast for January 7-9, 2011
By Reagen Sulewski
January 7, 2011
And we're back! The movie season is back up and running again for 2011, and while the Christmas holdovers remain the main story, there are actual new movies to talk about, even if you may not want to. Even though January has evolved out of the dumping ground it once was, you wouldn't quite know it by this weekend.
We start things off with Season of the Witch, about a medieval knight tasked with carting a suspected witch to trial for causing the Black Plague. In one of the great crimes against casting in cinema history, Nicolas Cage plays the knight, and not a million miles away from his The Sorcerer's Apprentice performance. Ron Perlman plays a fellow knight, who for some reason doesn't kick Cage's ass at the first opportunity, while relative newcomer Claire Foy plays “The Girl," the suspected witch. The only other name of real note in the cast is Christopher Lee, who I'm sure adds a proper note of mysteriousness, but doesn't really sell tickets.
The whole thing looks very confusingly directed by Domenic Sena (most recently of Whiteout, but most famously of Gone in 60 Seconds) with a whole bunch of action and battle scenes that don't seem to have a lot of purpose, or money behind their creation.
Ordinarily we could just dismiss this movie and its potential, but Nicolas Cage has a remarkable tendency to turn utter crap into box office hits. Ghost Rider and Knowing come to mind. Then again, with the sheer number of movies he appears in (get a better accountant, Nic) some are bound to surprise people. Season of the Witch isn't likely to be one, as it crosses the silly line just far enough that it's hard to believe this isn't premiering on SyFy. If you're desperate for an action fix this weekend, this may qualify, but my guess is that the number of desperate people isn't that large. Look for it to earn about $11 million this weekend.
Country Strong contains only the second and third worst casting decisions of the week, making Gwyneth Paltrow and Leighton Meester into country singers (not to criticize either one's voice – they're both capable singers, but neither look remotely “country”). Paltrow plays a world-class star who's had a public meltdown and highly publicized stint in treatment put back on tour by her Svengali of a husband Tim McGraw. Meester is an up and coming singer/beauty queen who threatens to upstage Paltrow, while Garret Hedlund (recently of Tron: Legacy) is another young singer who Paltrow may or may not have romantic interest in.
And that's pretty much it. It (or at least its ads) seem to aiming at being a more glamorous version of Crazy Heart, which isn't the worst idea in the world, but there's an authenticity that's lacking to these proceedings. Even worse, the audience for country music melodramas is limited even if the reviews weren't terrible. Opening on just 1,424 screens, Country Strong should come in with about $6 million.
This brings us to our returning films. True Grit fell just short off knocking off those Fockers over New Year's Weekend, but should finally turn the trick this weekend, as the bottom drops out of audience support for family movies. That Little Fockers has underwhelmed its audiences is just further reason to believe it falls to number two – or maybe even three – this weekend.
True Grit, meanwhile, has nothing but momentum on its side. Its Oscar candidacy continues to grow with each successful weekend. Already the most successful Coen Brothers movie, it's close to being the most successful western of recent years (not a fantastic achievement, but still) and should cross $100 million as soon as Friday. Look for it to take the the weekend crown with $17 million, with Fockers dropping to $14 million.
Tron: Legacy was a moderately surprising beneficiary of the Christmas season – simply because it seemed so polarizing a film. But as the main action film of the holiday season, the sequel to the 1982 movie set entirely within a computer turned from a mild disappointment into a hit with two high-teen weekends and sidling up to the $150 million domestic mark. That should be breached, this weekend or the following week, with $11 million, and $175 million looks plausible here.
The family film of choice was apparently Yogi Bear, and shame on you all for that. We could have stopped this movie below $50 million, but noooo, Little Johnny was sick of his toys and you had to plop him in a movie theater. Couldn't you have at least picked Narnia? The $35 million it earned between 12/24 and 1/2 took it from failure to a decision that isn't regretted entirely, and increases the chances of a Huckleberry Hound movie by one-third. It should drop to around $7 million this weekend.
While The Voyage of the Dawn Treader did see a small boost over New Year's Weekend like most films, it was one of the smallest of the week and by far the smallest of all family films. The rejection of the film in this series relative to the first one has been dramatic and unexpected and should really put the future films in this series in doubt. Give this $6 million this weekend.
Three big Oscar contenders made the most of their Christmas weeks, as The Fighter, The Black Swan and The King's Speech added significant chunks of cash to their totals, important weapons in their arsenals as they move towards the Oscar ballot deadline. A particular surprise is Black Swan hitting the $50 million mark, which is not a bet I would have given odds on prior to December. The more conventional The Fighter is about to hit that mark as well, while The King's Speech still has some rolling out to do. I expect all three films to hold well this weekend, with weekends of $7, $7 and $6 million respectively.
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Forecast: Weekend of January 7-9, 2011
|
Rank |
Film |
Number of
Sites |
Changes in Sites
from Last |
Estimated
Gross ($) |
|
1
|
True Grit
|
3,124
|
+41
|
17.6
|
|
2
|
Little Fockers
|
3,678
|
+124
|
14.5
|
|
3
|
Tron: Legacy
|
3,013
|
-352
|
11.4
|
|
4
|
Season of the Witch
|
2,816
|
New
|
11.1
|
|
5
|
The Fighter
|
2,528
|
-6
|
7.4
|
|
6
|
Black Swan
|
1,584
|
+31
|
7.2
|
|
7
|
The King's Speech
|
758
|
+58
|
6.6
|
|
8
|
Country Strong
|
1,424
|
+1,422
|
6.2
|
|
9
|
Yogi Bear
|
3,288
|
-327
|
5.8
|
|
10
|
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
|
2,814
|
-134
|
5.5
|
|
|
|
|
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