At least Zeta-Jones' latest won't suffer the fate of two movies that are being released with very little fanfare and are likely to be missed, ignored and then quickly forgotten. The first of these is an "urban" comedy which puts rapper Big Boi of OutKast onto the golf course asking Who's Your Caddy?, and then there's La Lohan's latest, a gory thriller called I Know Who Killed Me. Both are opening in roughly a thousand theatres and neither is likely to make more than $3 million this weekend, which puts them in danger of missing out on getting into the Top 10 altogether.

On top of that, Danny Boyle's Sunshine and Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn will expand into a few hundred theatres themselves, both of them giving audiences other choices and possibly bumping those two new movies out of the Top 10.

With The Simpsons Movie offering new comedy for the masses, the Sandler-James comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is likely to fall hard, creating a tight race for 2nd and 3rd place with New Line's musical Hairspray and the fifth Harry Potter movie.

This Week's Predictions -

1. The Simpsons Movie (20th Century Fox) - $48.5 million

2. Hairspray (New Line) - $16.0 million -42%

3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Warner Bros.) - $15.7 million -51%

4. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry (Universal) - $15.4 million -55%

5. No Reservations (Warner Bros.) - $12.5 million N/A

6. Transformers (DreamWorks/Paramount) - $10.8 million -47%

7. Ratatouille (Disney/Pixar) - $6.5 million -41%

8. Live Free or Die Hard (20th Century Fox) – $4.0 million -44%

9. Who's Your Caddy? (MGM/Dimension) - $2.6 million N/A

10. Sunshine (Fox Searchlight) - $2.2 million 956%

11. I Know Who Killed Me (Sony/TriStar) - $2.1 million N/A

Last year, Michael Mann's Miami Vice, starring Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, knocked Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest out of the #1 spot after three weeks, grossing $25.8 million in 3,000 theatres. Fox's teen comedy John Tucker Must Die did far better than anyone expected, making $14 million with help from a strong YouTube campaign, but Warner Bros.' latest animated attempt The Ant Bully, the second computer animated movie in a series of three in a row, bombed with just $8.4 million despite playing in IMAX 3-D, and it wound up below Sony's Monster House in its second weekend. The Top 10 made an almost abysmal $108 million over the weekend, a number that should be surpassed thanks to The Simpsons Movie.

The Simpsons Movies (20th Century Fox)
Starring (the voices of) Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille, Albert Brooks
Directed by David Silverman ; Written by Matt Groening, James L. Brooks, Al Jean, Mike Scully, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Matt Selman, John Swartzwelder, Jon Vitti (holy crap! That's a lotta writers!)
Genre: Animated, Comedy
Rated PG-13
Tagline: "For years, lines have been drawn… and then colored in yellow."
Plot Summary: An ecological disaster hits Springfield when Homer carelessly pollutes the local lake but when the government cracks down on the town, the people of Springfield rightfully blame Homer, forcing the Simpsons out of town and on the run.
Of Note: Fox's longest running animated sitcom comes to the big screen.

Press Conference with the Creators

Analysis: Twenty years ago, cartoonist Matt Groening created a cartoon family called "The Simpsons" to air during breaks on the fledgling Fox Network's "The Tracy Ullman Show." Two years later, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and baby Maggie had their own half-hour animated sitcom, which would become one of the longest running prime time animated shows on television, running for 18 seasons, winning 23 Emmys and ten years after its debut, being named "the best television show of the 20th Century" by no less than Time magazine. Not bad for a "cartoon", eh?

Although it's been a long time in the works, Groening, producer James L. Brooks and their talented team finally got around to making a feature film based on the popular Springfield characters and four years after it was first greenlit, it finally sees the light of day as one of the most anticipated films of the late summer. Essentially, Groening and company have turned the show into a communal experience, one where you can pile into a dark theatre with hundreds of "Simpsons" fans and laugh as a group at the film's irreverent humor. This principled worked particularly well with Fox's Borat (And yes, I'm still refusing to write the whole title), last year's comedy phenomenon based on Sacha Baron Cohen's foreign journalist who appeared on his HBO show "Da Ali G Show." Even though Borat might not have been the household name that is "The Simpsons" at the time, he quickly became a media sensation and then a box office phenom when it set a new opening weekend record for a movie opening in less than a thousand theatres. It opened at #1 with $16 million, averaging over $31,000 per theatre.

A big difference with The Simpsons Movie is that it's animated instead of live action, which in most cases skews younger, but the Simpsons are also far better known and firmly ensconced in the public consciousness after 18 seasons on television, with popular catchphrases like "Don't have a cow, man", "Cowabunga" and of course, "D'oh!" If you say those to someone, chances are that people will get the reference. Granted that the show's popularity has waned in the past few years as they've run out of jokes, but there's hope that the movie will resuscitate things. The Simpsons Movie also has a PG-13 rating rather than an R rating, which means that it will be able to bring in a large teen audience as well as the college-age crowd and older adults who enjoy the show.

The Simpsons aren't the first popular television cartoon brought to the big screen as shows like Nickelodeon's Rugrats and the WB's Pokemon have proven very successful at the box office, or at least their first movies have. Subsequent movies haven't done as well because it's hard to maintain an animated movie franchise based on a TV show as they tend to show diminishing returns. More recently, Nickeloden's The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie made over $30 million its opening weekend, but all three of those were aimed directly at kids and families while the big screen version of Matt Stone and Trey Parker's South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut was shooting for the college-age males who were obsessed with the show, and they were able to get away with a lot more with an R-rating, although that probably lessened the amount of money it was able to make at the box office.

The movie will attract some of the same 15-to-40 year-old guys that would flock to see comedies like the Jackass movies or Will Ferrell's Talladega Nights last summer in that they'll want to see it opening weekend with the biggest crowds. While that will certainly be the case with many guys, just as many might be skeptical of the show translating to the big screen and they might wait until they hear from their buddies that it's worth seeing. It's a bit worrisome when one realizes how animation normally done for smaller television screens rarely translates to the big screen—case in point, The Powerpuff Girls Movie--but the crew behind the Simspons have done an amazing job embellishing the familiar look of the family and their Springfield setting with computer-colored animation that looks amazing on the big screen. Even though the movie is rated PG-13, the fact that it's an animated movie might have parents thinking it's okay to take their kids to see it, and though it's definitely more adult than other recent CG movies, it's still relatively tame, receiving the rating for "irreverent humor" rather than bad language, sex or violence. Although there certainly will be younger women who've seen or heard of the show, most women would want on this unless they were dragged to see it opening weekend by husbands and boyfriends. One can expect that women over 40 will have very little interest in it.

Even though it shouldn't be too hard to sell a "Simpsons" movie to the show's millions of fans, 20th Century Fox has nailed this one with a brilliant marketing campaign that included 7-11 stores nationwide dressed-up like the Kwik-E-Marts from the show, featuring exclusive Simpsons merchandise and food products that quickly sold out as a buying frenzy began across the nation. They also introduced this very cool "Simpsonizeme" thing on their web site that allowed fans to create their own Simpsons avatars, and there've been tons of commercials and tie-ins for The Simpsons Movie have been fairly regular on both the Fox network and FX cable stations. None of that might even be necessary at this point, but they certainly have driven the awareness of the movie through the roof with that stuff and their intensive MySpace campaign, which has helped market previous comedies of theirs. (The movie's MySpace page has over 150,000 "friends" at this writing, a lot of those being added in the last 24 hours, which is pretty amazing.)

For whatever reason, Fox has made critics and journalists wait until the last second to see the movie, possibly to avoid spoilers circulating on the 'net but also to help build up anticipation like they did with Borat last year, and that will help add to the feeling that this is a true event film, something that can guarantee large audiences opening weekend, although it might be a bit optimistic to think that it might make more than $50 million right off the bat. (With the Comic-Con taking place in San Diego this weekend, you can expect that theatres in the area will be packed with rabid fans going to see it in large groups.)

Why I Should See It: "The Simpsons" is one of the funniest shows on television and there's nothing better than seeing something that funny with a theatre full of fans.
Why Not: It's only 90 minutes long!!!!
Projections: $47 to 50 million opening weekend and $135 to 140 million total

COMPARISONS

No Reservations (Warner Bros.)
Starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin, Patricia Clarkson, Jenny Wade, Lily Rabe
Directed by Scott Hicks (Shine, Hearts in Atlantis, Snow Falling on Cedars); Written by Carol Fuchs (debut)
Genre: Drama, Romance, Comedy
Rated PG
Tagline: "Life isn't always made to order."
Plot Summary: Kate Armstrong (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is a tough, hard-working New York chef who has bypassed having a personal life to focus on her thriving career. When her sister dies in a car accident, Kate is forced to care for her young niece Zoe (Abigail Breslin) but when a hot-shot sous chef named Nick (Aaron Eckhart) is brought in to help at the restaurant, Kate finds that it's not as easy to control everything in her life as she thought.
Of Note: Catherine Zeta-Jones and Aaron Eckhart star in this English-language remake of Sandra Nettelbeck's Mostly Martha.

Review
New York Press Conference with Zeta-Jones and Eckhart
Exclusive Interview with Scott Hicks (Coming Soon!)

Analysis: Not to be confused with the Anthony Bourdain show of the same name which kicks off its second season on the Travel Channel this weekend, Warner Bros.' latest romantic dramedy is a vehicle for actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, making her first movie appearance since reuniting with Antonio Banderas for their action sequel The Legend of Zorro nearly two years ago. For the most part, Zeta-Jones has been taking care of her and Michael Douglas' kids, but with No Reservations she returns to familiar romantic comedy territory that she's trodden before, although this is the first time where she's the biggest star of such a movie. What most people won't know is that the movie is based on the German hit Mostly Martha, a fact that won't be helped by the fact that Zeta-Jones doesn't even play a character named "Martha" despite it being essentially the same story.

One would think that the Welsh actress was born with a silver spoon in her mouth having starred in her first hit The Mask of Zorro in 1988 and followed that with two more hits including the summer horror remake The Haunting, which grossed $33 million its opening weekend. After a pivotal role in Steven Soderbergh's ensemble drama Traffic, Zeta-Jones faced off against Julia Roberts in the summer romantic comedy America's Sweethearts, which also did well, but it wasn't until she starred in the musical Chicago where things really exploded for the actress, as she stole the movie with her singing and dancing, garnering a supporting Oscar for her performance. In 2004, Zeta-Jones teamed with Steven Spielberg to play Tom Hanks' romantic interest in the less-than-successful airport comedy The Terminal before rounding out the cast of Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's 12. Even though it has a lot of drama, No Reservations probably comes closest in tone to the Coen Brothers' romantic comedy 2003 Intolerable Cruelty which had Zeta-Jones facing off against George Clooney, but that only made $35 million after a $12 million opening.

Granted, No Reservations has a better release date, but Zeta-Jones' co-star Aaron Eckhart isn't exactly on a par with George Clooney at the box office. Ironically, Eckhart is also a veteran of the Soderbergh stable of actors, having starred opposite Julia Roberts in the Oscar-winning Erin Brockovich (See? It all ties together!), and he's done lots of odds and ends including the sci-flop The Core, before getting attention for his starring role in the 2006 dark comedy Thank You for Smoking, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. Next up for Eckhart is the high-profile role of Harvey Dent AKA Two-Face in the 2008 Batman sequel The Dark Knight, which has driven up his exposure even more.

The third link in the chain is 11-year-old Abigail Breslin, who wowed audiences in the title role as Little Miss Sunshine, a hit comedy that received numerous Oscar nominations earlier this year including Best Picture and a Best Supporting Actress nod for Breslin. The young actress is certainly recognizable enough to be featured in the commercials with the two older actors, showing that she's come along way since taking a back seat to Mel Gibson in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs.

Movies that take place in the kitchen and around food aren't that uncommon, but most of the more memorable ones like Big Night and Dinner Rush were independent films, and it's odd having two studio movies about cooking within the course of the month, the first being Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille. What's interesting is that the film was able to get a PG rating, something that's rarely the case with romantic comedies and dramas today, but it's a testament to Australian director Scott Hicks who first came to prominence with his Oscar-nominated Shine that he was able to create a family-friendly film out of the kind of movie that usually gets a PG-13, but having a friendlier rating could bring in the more puritanical older audience as well as groups of younger girls.

The sad fact is that few of them will have ever seen Sandra Nettlebeck's far superior original movie, but Warner Bros. has done their usual hard sell with a stream of varying commercials that either push the humor or the drama, hoping that someone out there will be interested in one or the other. Of course, this creates mixed messages since no one knows which one it is. Unlike Ratatouille, they've been taking advantage of the cooking and foodie connections with regular commercials on Bravo during their hit show "Top Chef" and on the Food Network, where they'll be running a cooking special featuring the entire cast on Thursday night. Since those shows tend to be watched by a lot of women and they'll be as interested in the food connection as the romantic one, it's a smart move. Warner Bros. also ran sneak previews of the movie on Saturday in hopes that the women who went to see it might recommend it to friends around the watercooler on Monday.

The big thing is that there'll be very few guys (and almost no single ones) who'll have any interest in seeing this, and they're more likely to be dragged their by wives and dates than want to see it on their own, even if they happen to be metrosexual food lovers. Certainly, it will be a great date movie, but since guys are generally selfish, there's nothing to say they won't just drag their significant others to see The Simpsons Movie. (Men!) Unfortunately, late summer is a weird time to release a movie like this, since the box office is so driven by the teen market, but still, one can expect this to do respectable business though nothing spectacular this weekend thanks to the women who'll be interested in something different. Hopefully they'll already have seen Hairspray, which is the one spoiler for this doing any business.

Why I Should See It: The original German movie was great and this is a decent crowd-pleasing film due to the chemistry between Zeta-Jones and Eckhart.
Why Not: If you're a guy, you're going to be bored to tears and spend the movie wondering how you can sneak into a screening of The Simpsons Movie.
Projections: $11 to 13 million opening weekend and less than $40 million total.

COMPARISONS

Who's Your Caddy? (Dimension Films)
Starring Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, Terry Crews, Tamala Jones, Andy Milonakis, Sherri Shepherd, Faizon Love, Finesse Mitchel, Jeffrey Jones
Directed by Don Michael Paul (Half Past Dead and a TV actor who's appeared in various "CSI" shows); Written by Don Michael Paul (Half Past Dead), Bradley Allenstein (Juwanna Man), Robert Henry
Genre: Comedy, Sports
Rated PG-13
Tagline: "This summer, it's the street vs. the elite."
Plot Summary: C-Note (Antwan "Big Boi" Patton) is a wealthy rap mogul from Atlanta who meets resistance when he tries to join the conservative Carolina Pines Golf & Country Club from the club's snotty president (Jeffrey Jones), so he and his crew do whatever they can to gain membership by buying property near the golf course. When that doesn't work, he decides to face the president in a golf tournament, winner take all.
Of Note: Someone actually financed another movie from Don Michael Paul?

Analysis: It's been some time since we've covered an "urban comedy" in this column, because what once was a thriving market has certainly settled down a bit in the last few years as African-American audiences tend to be more jaded about wasting money going to see these bad comedies in theatres. The last movie to come even close to this genre was Chris Rock's I Think I Love My Wife which tanked and other "sure bets" in recent years like Soul Plane with Snoop Dogg and Queen Latifah's The Cookout have also failed. Really, the only movies that have done well have been Tyler Perry's offerings, and even his last movie Daddy's Little Girls failed to bring in his normal audience without Perry appearing as his cross-dressing granny Madea.

This is the latest movie from Don Michael Paul, a Hollywood bit actor whose "claim to fame" is having helmed the Steven Seagal action-thriller Half Past Dead starring rapper DMX, and it's a twist on the snobs vs. the slobs premise that's been used so much in comedies over the last three years. While a movie like this would usually feature a big name star like Chris Rock or Martin Lawrence, instead it stars Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, one half of the popular rap group OutKast, who looks to be following in the footsteps of Rodney Dangerfield by taking on this role in a movie that looks like they combined all of the plots from Dangerfield's "classics" and then "urbanized" it. "Big Boi"s foray into acting began with the local drama ATL early last year, which did far better than expected, and then continued into his group's extended music video Idlewild, which didn't fare nearly as well when it opened a year ago at the ass-end of summer.

At least he has some help in the form of a couple strong comic actors including Terry Crews, who'll be appearing in Balls of Fury next month, and the diminutive Tony Cox who stole many laughs from Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa before appearing in many recent spoof movies like 2006's Date Movie. Faizon Love reunites with Big Boy after the two of them starred together in Idlewild, and he brings a lot of the humor to the trailer and there's also MTV cult figure Andy Milonakis, though he doesn't appear in the trailer. If that isn't enough to convince you to see the movie--and good for you for holding out, because you really should expect a lot more than that--there's also Jeffrey Jones, best known for playing the principal in Ferris Buehler's Day Off until recently when he was arrested for pedophilia for which he pleaded "no contest." Jones is likely to be to this movie what Tom Arnold was to Soul Plane AKA the token white has-been to play the villain to the rapper hero.

Golfing movies haven't done very well in recent years, although most of those have been dramas, and the sport does have a long-standing history in comedy from the '80s classic Caddyshack starring Bill Murray--it probably isn't a coincidence that this has a similar title and is trying to sell itself as an urban remake of that--and of course, Adam Sandler's Happy Gilmore, which kick-started that comic actor's long career. Without trying to be racist, golfing isn't exactly a sport that's followed rabidly by African-American audiences, so it's a weird idea to try to convince them to see a movie set in this world, especially after the failure of the recent biodrama Pride, starring popular actors Terrence Howard and Bernie Mac, which was set in the world of competitive swimming. On top of that, the only rapper whose successfully nourished a career in comedy is Ice Cube from the NWA who started with racier black comedies like the Friday franchise, but lately has been starring in tamer family fare like Are We There Yet?. Otherwise, very few rappers have made the successful transition to comedy as seen by Snoop Dog and Dr. Dre's failed attempt with The Wash, and one wonders if any OutKast fans would bother with a low-brow comedy like this.

Who's Your Caddy? is being "released" (and I use the term loosely because with the way Dimension/MGM is putting it out with almost no advertising, it may as well have escaped) in 1,000 theatres, which isn't odd for movies targeting African-American audiences in "urban" areas i.e. big cities and the South, and maybe the movie will do well in the latter where Big Boi is the most popular but chances are that most people won't know about this movie and a lot of others won't care to waste money seeing it in theatres.

Why I Should See It: You have nothing else to do this weekend.
Why Not: Why watch a movie about golf when you can get to the links and play golf or watch "Dorf on Golf" for the hundredth time?
Projections: $2 to 3 million opening weekend and less than $6 million total.

COMPARISONS

I Know Who Killed Me (Sony/Tristar)
Starring Lindsay Lohan, Julia Ormond, Neal McDonough, Brian Geraghty, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Spencer Garrett, Gregory Itzin, Bonnie Aarons, Kenya Moore, Thomas Tofel, Rodney Rowland, David Figlioli
Directed by Chris Sivertson (Toolbox Murders, The Lost) ; Written by Jeff Hammond (debut)
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Rated R
Tagline: "If you think you know the secret… think twice."
Plot Summary: College co-ed Aubrey Fleming (Lindsay Lohan) is abducted and tortured by a serial killer, but when she regains consciousness after presumably escaping she denies being this Aubrey Fleming everyone's so worried about and that the real Aubrey might still be in danger. (What the F*CK?!?!)
Of Note: Holy f*cking crap!! This is almost the exact same f*cking plot as Captivity!!!

Analysis: Half of me wants to save some time by cutting and pasting my write-up on Captivity from a few weeks back, because pinch me to make sure I'm not having a bad dream, but this premise sounds very similar, doesn't it? The question is what do you get when you combine "torture porn" with troubled of-age paparazzi fodder Lindsay Lohan? Well, you don't get Citizen Kane that's for sure. Heck, you might not even get something on a par with Captivity with the way that Sony/TriStar has been burying this movie. Seriously, has anyone seen a single ad or commercial for this? I haven't and that's saying something. It's funny because at the beginning of the summer, it received a full page preview in Entertainment Weekly's summer preview issue, but a few months later and it's gotten little in the way of promotion.

This is a pretty weird concept since on the one hand, it looks a lot like those "torture porn" movies we keep hearing about but then it involves one of those strange "mind f*ck" premises of not knowing what is going on, something we saw recently in David Goyer's The Invisible. The big difference is that this isn't a third string actress like Elisha Cuthbert in the lead, but Lindsay Lohan, who was having a great career while she remained warmly wrapped in the Disney fold, but then she turned 18 and started getting more serious about her acting (and other substances) and all of sudden, the only buzz surrounding this movie is the weirdness about the fact she portrays a stripper in the movie. Most of Lohan's success has come from an audience of teen and 'tween girls who have followed her from movie to movie but she's probably lost a lot of them with her more mature choices in the last year and starring in a gory R-rated mind f*ck thriller is not the way to revive your career. I mean, seriously, aren't agents supposed to be protecting their clients from movies like this? Apparently not, because Jim Carrey's last movie was the similarly eclectic identity thriller The Number 23 and that didn't do much to save his career either. Of course, you can't really promote a movie much when your star is in rehab until the week before it opens either.

The other problem is that the movie just looks boring, so if people do happen to know about it, that doesn't mean they'll be interested in paying money to see it in theatres. Frankly, it's pretty amazing that this is getting a theatrical release at all, let alone a wider release than TriStar's last dumper Wind Chill, which was given a limited release three months ago to make a whopping $31 thousand. (Yes, you read that right… I said "thousand"!) Sony's releasing it into over a thousand theatres with no advance press, and like other films, it probably won't be screened for critics until opening day, although even the few that might know about the movie will probably pass. This is the classic case of a summer bomb, and it's likely to make less in total than some of Lohan's weaker movies made their opening weekend. Good luck getting into the top 10 with this, Lindsay.

Why I Should See It: You have nothing else to do this weekend.
Why Not: Because you probably have a stack of books that you haven't had a chance to read yet, so might as well get to them.
Projections: This will be lucky if it makes $2 million over the weekend, and will probably wind up with less than $5 million total.

COMPARISONS

Next week, August kicks off with way too many movies to list (If you really must know, you can see them here) but since I'll be in San Diego for most of the week, expect next week's Weekend Warrior to arrive late. (There won't be a Thursday update this week either. Sorry!)