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The widest release of the week belongs to Flicka, a remake of the 1943 film My Friend Flicka. It stars Alison Lohman as a wild-spirited girl who adopts a similarly wild horse in order to prove to her father (played by country singer Tim McGraw) that she's capable of running her own life and the family ranch. Tender bonding (not that kind, sickos) between a girl and her horse ensues.

Flicka has had a fair amount of its thunder stolen by last fall's Dreamer, which had the benefit of a more solid cast and not coming from quite so dated a source. However, there's probably room enough for two girl-and-her-horse stories in one year's span and this one should come in with a modest $6 million weekend.

One of the stranger looking films of the year is Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. Based on the life of the Austrian princess who married into the French Royal Family, Coppola's film is a punk-rock/new wave influenced anachronistic take on French court life.

Kirsten Dunst stars in the titular role, which looks to rehabilitate Antoinette's reputation as a spoiled member of the aristocracy that had no understanding of the people. Instead it portrays her as a victim of her time and an unfortunate flashpoint for a rebellious populace.

The film premiered at Cannes to mixed reception, with some praising the film's bold styling, with others proclaiming it a vapid mess. It's not going to be an easy sell no matter what (especially with one of the worst trailers for a non-action movie ever made). However, Coppola's earned a lot of points with her first two directorial efforts, The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, so this should at least bring in the curious. Opening on approximately 800 screens, it should open to about $5 million.

The Grudge 2 picks up a couple of screens from last weekend, but really, this film is dead in the water after its $20 million opening. It started to fall even within the weekend, with its Sunday already one third of its Friday total. Mid-week figures already have it in third behind Man of the Year, so I think we could be looking at an epic second weekend drop to something in the neighborhood of $6-7 million.

This leaves room for The Departed to stick around in the top realms of the box office, perhaps even in contention for top spot if Flags of Our Fathers falters. It held onto a strong 70% of its first weekend box office and has been number one throughout the week. It should have a third weekend of approximately $14 million, pushing its total to around $80 million after this weekend.

Man of the Year will have to fight off a resilient Open Season to hold onto its spot in the box office, though the animated family film should pass it. It dropped a mere 30% in its third weekend, while Man of the Year debuted to mediocre reviews and has no built in audience to fall back on. Open Season should pull in another $8 million, moving ahead of Robin Williams' weak political satire, which will come in with around $6 million.

Forecast: Weekend of October 20-22, 2006
Rank	Film	Number of Sites	Changes in Sites from Last	Estimated Gross ($)
1	Flags of Our Fathers	1,876	New	17.4
2	The Prestige	2,281	New	14.6
3	The Departed	3,005	-12	14.2
4	Open Season	3,379	-308	8.5
5	Flicka	2,877	New	6.3
6	Man of the Year	2,522	+7	6.3
7	The Grudge 2	3,214	+3	6.2
8	Marie Antoinette	859	New	5.5
9	The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning	2,569	-251	3.3
10	The Guardian	2,558	-486	2.9

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