Preview and Projections for the Weekend of February 6th, 2004
By Edward Douglas -

Greetings and welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly guide to the weekend’s new movies. Tune in every Tuesday for the latest look at the upcoming weekend, and then check back on Friday for any last minute updates.

WEEKEND PROJECTIONS - updated 2.05.04

Now that the January dumping ground has passed, studios will try to sneak a couple of hits into theatres to try to make up for all of the crap. MGM kicks off their year with a sequel to one of their biggest non-Bond/Blonde hits of the last few years with the urban comedy, Barbershop 2: Back in Business, reuniting Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer, who are joined by the ultra-hot Queen Latifah. It should easily score the top spot with a significant lead over the rest of the pack. Disney has had success with their sports films in the past, and Miracle’s look at one of the defining moments of the 80’s in American history should guarantee an audience of older moviegoers looking for a bit of nostalgia. Fox’s attempt to get the much neglected kid market with Catch That Kid starring Panic Room’s Kristen Stewart might get disrupted by its last minute move, which will make it harder to promote, but it should score third place and do decent business in February, with little competition for younger movie fans. Look for last week’s dogs to quickly vacate the Top 10, making room for the expanding Oscar hopefuls, including Charlize Theron's Monster, which should finally hit the Top 10 after just missing the mark last week.

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# of Theaters	Average	Week
1	New	Barbershop 2	$25.0	N/A	2,711	$9,222	1
2	New	Miracle	$16.3	N/A	2,605	$6,257	1
3	New	Catch That Kid	$9.0	N/A	2,844	$3,165	1
4	1	You Got Served	$7.3	-54%	1,943	$3,757	2
5	2	The Butterfly Effect	$6.0	-37%	2,519	$2,382	3
6	3	Along Came Polly	$5.5	-41%	2,955	$1,861	4
7	11	Monster	$4.0	14%	890	$4,494	7
8	7	Mystic River	$3.5	-20%	1,370	$2,555	17
9	4	Lord of the Rings: Return of the King	$3.3	-38%	1,878	$1,757	8
10	6	Big Fish	$2.6	-43%	1,608	$1,608	9
			Est. Weekend Total $82.50	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -31%		Est. Average PTA $3,706

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BARBERSHOP 2: BACK IN BUSINESS (MGM Studios)
Starring: Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer, Eve, Troy Garity, Sean Patrick Thomas, Michael Ealy, Leonard Earl Howze, Queen Latifah
Directed by: Kevin Rodney Sullivan (How Stella Got Her Groove Back)
Rated PG-13
Tagline: “Back in business.”

Ice Cube, Cedric the Entertainer and the rest of the guys at the downtown Chicago barbershop made famous in the hit 2002 comedy return for another round, but the usual sense of community and their outrageous discussions is threatened by urban developers who hope to replace the small barbershops with big national chains.

Barbershop slipped under most people’s radar when it opened in September 2002. Like many other urban comedies, it marketed itself directly to the African American community with slice-of-life humor and characters that they could take to heart. After an impressive $20 million opening weekend, it grossed $75 million in theatres, generating buzz and controversy from statements made by Cedric the Entertainer about civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Barbershop also generated over $48 million from video and DVD rentals, so that a lot more people managed to catch it after it left theatres. Like the first movie, Barbershop 2 was made for very little money, so its success and profitability for MGM Studios seems almost guaranteed.

The breakout performance of the first film had to be Cedric the Entertainer, who first got attention as one of the four stand-up comics featured in the hit comedy concert film, The Original Kings of Comedy. Cedric has spent much of his time since the first Barbershop movie in small but memorable parts in comedies like Matthew Perry’s Serving Sara and the Coen Brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty, not to mention his short-lived sketch comedy show on FOX.

Rapper Ice Cube of the controversial group N.W.A. is proving himself to be one of the most popular African American actors of the last decade, beginning with his starring role in John Singleton’s Boyz from the Hood in 1991, to the kickoff of his other successful comedy franchise, Friday in 1995. Since making the move from music to movies, he has appeared in everything from action comedies (All About the Benjamins) to B sci-fi/horror movies (John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars), building upon his fanbase with every movie he makes. Most recently, Ice Cube brought a bit of “street cred” to the motorcycle action flick, Torque, although that wasn’t enough to help it do well at the box office. Oddly, both Ice Cube and Cedric are starring in family road trip movies in the next year with Are We There Yet? And Johnson Family Vacation respectively.

Despite the two popular stars, Barbershop 2’s secret weapon will be Queen Latifah, who has a small part as Gina, the stylist at the beauty shop next door. Her presence will help bring women to see the sequel, helping to build up an audience for her spin-off picture, Beauty Shop. 2003 was a great year for the former rapper, as she kicked it off with her popular performance in Chicago being nominated for both Golden Globe and Academy awards, and then her comedy, Bringing Down the House, with Steve Martin had an astounding $30 million opening. Latifah has gotten so popular that even a small appearance in another hit comedy sequel, Scary Movie 3, helped get a lot of people into theatres that might not have seen the movie otherwise. The other main difference from the first movie is that original director is gone to be replaced by Kevin Rodney Sullivan, who had his own urban hit with the romantic comedy, How Stella Got Her Groove Back.

There are usually only two ways that comic sequels can go: they can do well or they can do poorly. When they do well, you have hits like Next Friday, the sequel to Ice Cube’s ‘hood comedy Friday, which made over twice as much as the original both opening weekend and overall. This was despite opening during the slower winter months, much like Barbershop 2. The next installment, Friday After Next, didn’t fare as well with its Christmas theme, but Barbershop becomes only the second urban comedy to warrant a sequel. Michael Myers’ Austin Powers is another great indicator of a concept that did well enough to generate larger audiences for each subsequent sequel. When they don’t work, you end up with something like the Billy Crystal-Robert DeNiro gangster comedy, Analyze That, that made less opening weekend than its predecessor.

Fortunately, Barbershop 2 won’t have to worry too much about its story, because what will bring fans of the original movie back will be more of Cedric’s outrageous rantings about politics and pop culture, and Latifah will add a whole new dynamic. There might always be an audience for this type of humor and like the Friday movies, the time since the last movie is so slight that the positive buzz still abounds. With that in mind, even the winter release and the been-there-done that feel to the movie won’t hurt this as those who enjoyed the first movie will rush out to catch the sequel.

With You Got Served being the only movie geared towards the urban market and with comedy being king--as seen by huge hits like Cheaper by the Dozen and Along Came Polly--the time is perfect for Barbershop 2 to continue what the first movie started. Opening in over 800 more theatres than the original, business might be a bit more spread out, but the sequel shouldn’t have a problem surpassing the opening of the original movie with an opening weekend of $22 to 25 million.

Related Comparisons:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Barbershop	9/13/02	1,605		$20.63	$12,852	$75.07
Friday After Next	11/22/02	1,616		$13.01	$8,052	$32.87
Next Friday	1/14/00	1,103	$4.45	$14.44	$13,092	$57.18
Friday	4/28/95	865	$1.52	$6.59	$7,618	$27.39
All About the Benjamins	3/8/02	1,505		$10.13	$6,731	$25.48
Intolerable Cruelty	10/10/03	2,564		$12.52	$4,885	$35.37
Serving Sara	8/23/02	2,154		$5.76	$2,673	$16.81
The Original Kings of Comedy	8/18/00	847	$0.56	$11.05	$13,046	$38.13
Scary Movie 3	10/24/03	3,505		$48.11	$13,727	$109.89
Bringing Down the House	3/7/03	2,801		$31.10	$11,104	$132.67
How Stella Got Her Groove Back	8/14/98	1,395		$11.32	$8,115	$37.65

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CATCH THAT KID (20^th Century Fox)
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Corbin Bleu, Max Thieriot, Jennifer Beals, Sam Robards, John Carroll Lynch, James LeGros
Directed by: Bart Freundlich (World Traveler, The Myth of Fingerprints)
Rated PG
Tagline: “They’re on a mission without permission.”

This remake of Denmark’s hit movie Klaretøsen, stars Panic Room’s Kristen Stewart as a young rock climber whose father is paralyzed in an accident. To help get the money for an operation that might save him, she puts together a group of friends to stage a wild hi-tech bank robbery, using their respective abilities.

Ever since Dimension Films had a surprise hit with Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids in the spring of 2001, every studio is trying to create their own “super kid” franchise in hopes of creating the next child star. Having made an impact co-starring with Jodie Foster in David Fincher’s 2002 thriller, Panic Room, Kristen Stewart seemed like the perfect candidate. Having a premise that had already proven successful in its native Denmark makes this seem like an obvious decision by Fox, who is hoping to get some of the same interest for this movie that helped make such big hits out of Spy Kids or Frankie Muniz’s Agent Cody Banks, both made for relatively little money but doing well enough to spawn franchises. The former had the benefits of known actors and director and a slow Easter weekend with few other family films, and Agent Cody Banks had Muniz, who has quite a large fanbase from his FOX sitcom, “Malcolm in the Middle”. It’s more than likely that Catch That Kid will get overlooked like the 2002 Nickelodeon film, Clockstoppers, which also tried putting kids into a cool sci-fi action setting; ironically, it opened the same Easter weekend as Stewart’s Panic Room, and did rather poorly. Just last week, The Perfect Score, another movie about thieving teens, bombed despite the support of MTV Films, so one wonders if this sort of movie has run its course.

Like the decision for cult director Robert Rodriguez to do Spy Kids, this might seem like an odd choice for director Bart Freundlich, better known for indie flicks like World Traveler and The Myth of Fingerprints, both with his wife, actress Julianne Moore. That said, it makes perfect sense considering that the two have kids and he probably wants to make more movies for them, much like Rodriguez and other directors.

Originally, Fox was going to release this last summer, but wiser heads prevailed when the proximity to Spy Kids 3-D was realized. It was moved to an April weekend exactly three years after the opening of Spy Kids, but in late December, Fox decided to move it to this coming weekend, severely cutting back its lead time for marketing and promotion. Fox has tried to step up the pace accordingly to make up for the lost time, but the movie needs a stronger push if it’s going to appeal to a jaded youth audience.

Since this doesn’t look that bad and there is little else for younger teens, there may be enough room for this movie to get a little business, but it could end up losing some of its family audience to the better promoted Disney movie, Miracle. The last minute move to this weekend might not have been the smartest move Fox has made, but they’re making up for it with the widest release of the new movies. Despite this, it probably won’t make more than $9 or $10 million this weekend.

Related Comparisons:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Panic Room	3/29/02	3,053		$30.06	$9,845	$95.31
The Perfect Score	1/30/04	2,206		$5.00*	$2,264	$5.00
Agent Cody Banks	3/14/03	3,369		$14.06	$4,175	$47.55
Clockstoppers	3/29/02	2,540		$10.11	$3,980	$36.99
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over	7/25/03	3,344		$33.42	$9,993	$111.75
Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams	8/9/02	3,307	$8.30	$16.71	$5,053	$84.94
Spy Kids	3/30/01	3,104		$26.55	$8,552	$106.26
Panic Room	3/29/02	3,053		$30.06	$9,845	$95.31

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MIRACLE (Walt Disney Pictures)
Starring: Kurt Russell, Patricia Clarkson, Nathan West, Eddie Cahill, Noah Emmerich, Kenneth Mitchell
Directed by: Gavin O’Connor (Tumbleweeds)
Rated PG
Tagline: “If you believe in yourself, anything can happen”

(SPOILER WARNING: While one would assume that most people would know something about the history of the events covered in this sports movie and what happened, for those going to see this not wanting to know how it turns out, read no further.)

In 1980, Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell), a former Olympics hockey player cut from the winning 1960 U.S. team, put together a ragtag band of college hockey players, taking them to the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid to face the seemingly invincible Russian hockey team, winners of four successive gold medals. Miracle tells the true story of how they worked together to defy the odds working against them.

The alternate tagline for Miracle--“the story of the greatest moment in sports history”--says it all, and the victory of the US hockey team in 1980 will always be remembered in the mind of older adults who could never imagine such an impossible victory happening. Although some might see this as just another sports event movie--and one that has been covered in at least two television movies including one as recently as 2000--that moment contributed greatly to the revised patriotism in Americans as the went into the last decade of the Cold War. After all, it was a new decade and at that point, little did people know that the decade would mainly be remembered for its wacky music and bands, but as far as sports events, this one was it. Of course, this is bearing in mind that it happened almost 24 years ago and few under 30 will even remember it, but in the last year, there has been an even bigger interest and sense of nostalgia for the 80’s, and Miracle.

More significantly, Miracle marks the return of Kurt Russell to doing live action Disney films, as the actor got his start in the 60’s and 70’s in such Disney classics as The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, The Barefoot Executive, and my personal favorite, Superdad. In the 80's Russell became a popular action star, kicked off by his memorable role as Snake Plyskin in the John Carpenter classic, Escape from New York, a role he reprised for the 1996, Escape from L.A. A lot of guys also enjoyed Russell as Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China, and his starring role in Ron Howard’s Backdraft in 1991 was one of Russell’s biggest hits to date. Despite his popularity in the 70s and 80s, Russell has not had much luck as a leading man in the last five years, having appeared in three successive dogs. After the sci-fi bomb, Soldier, his love of all things Elvis probably drove him to appear with Kevin Costner in the 2001 dog, 3000 Miles to Graceland, and his last movie, the Ron Shelton police drama, Dark Blue, was an unmitigated failure last February. The question is whether hockey fans and those interested in the subject matter will look past Russell’s appearance in the movie, but when you think about it, his role in the film will just help add to the nostalgia factor with older moviegoers.

Although her part is being played down, the film also stars actress Patricia Clarkson, who has received a lot of attention, not to mention an Oscar nomination, for her significant roles last year. Miracle kicks off another great year of movies from her.

Although hockey might not be as popular or prominent a sport as baseball or football, one cannot deny that the sport has diehard fans, probably more dedicated than some of those other sports. Because of that, they’re more likely to rush out to see a movie about hockey. Then again, there really haven’t been that many movies about the sport with the most memorable exceptions being Paul Newman’s Slapshot and Disney’s The Mighty Ducks, starring Emilio Estevez, the latter which spawned two sequels after grossing $50 million.

Disney has had significant success with other sports movies in the last few years, most notably with Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans (2000) and Dennis Quaid in The Rookie (2002). Both did better than expected, although the former had a bankable box office star and the latter opened over the lucrative Easter weekend. Then again, those movies also dealt with the worlds of football and baseball, as did MTV’s Varsity Blues, the Al Pacino drama Any Given Sunday, and two movies starring Keanu Reeves, The Replacements and Hardball, which fared the worst of the lot, but still grossed $40 million.

Miracle will be playing mainly to males over 30, particularly in the heavy hockey regions like the Midwest, Northeast and Canada. As usual, Disney’s marketing department has put together incredible commercials that will surely appeal to sports fans with its soundtrack of Aerosmith’s “Dream On” and Queen’s “We Will Rock You”. Disney even bought a spot during the Super Bowl, the most watched sporting event of the year, in hopes that sports fans will go to the movie to soothe their sports jones. Few teens will be familiar with the events covered in the movie, so there’ll be little interest in the normally dominant movie-going demographic, but one shouldn’t rule the movie out for older women, despite the fact that hockey is more of a guys’ sport. The nature of this story could be of interest to older women who remember the events. On top of that, the PG rating will make this a good movie for fathers to take their teen boys to see, since it will allow them to share the bond that sports brings to any relationship.

To convince naysayers that may feel it’s not worth paying for what is essentially a TV movie remake, Disney held sneak previews in 1,000 theatres this past Saturday; demand was high enough that many of them sold out ahead of time. These should help generate positive word-of-mouth and buzz going into that important last week before release.

What should be a quality inspirational movie with the backing of last year’s most profitable movie studio, Miracle shouldn’t have a problem finding an older audience in a market filled with darker humor and violence geared towards younger audiences. That said, Miracle will be settling for second place, although one can expect people who don’t often go to the movies getting to theatres to see this. An opening weekend of $15 to 17 million and strong legs over the next few weeks should be expected.

Related Comparisons:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Rookie	3/29/02	2,511		$16.02	$6,381	$75.60
Hardball	9/14/01	2,137		$9.39	$4,392	$40.22
Remember the Titans	9/29/00	1,865		$20.91	$11,212	$115.60
The Replacements	8/11/00	2,754		$11.04	$4,009	$44.32
Any Given Sunday	12/24/99	2,505	$7.05	$13.58	$5,421	$75.53
Varsity Blues	1/15/99	2,121		$15.92	$7,506	$52.89
The Mighty Ducks	10/2/92	1,280		$6.04	$4,719	$50.75
Dark Blue	2/21/03	2,176		$3.88	$1,783	$9.24
3000 Miles to Graceland	2/23/01	2,545		$7.16	$2,813	$15.74
Soldier	10/23/98	2,507		$6.45	$2,573	$14.62
Escape from LA	8/9/96	2,312		$8.91	$3,854	$25.43
Backdraft	5/24/91	1,852		$15.72	$8,488	$77.48

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UNDER THE RADAR

Do you live in a major North American city? If so, there are a number of limited release movies worth checking out. And if you don't live in one of the cities in which these movies open, look for some of them to hit your area sometime in the next few months.

AN AMAZING COUPLE: TRILOGY 2 (Magnolia Pictures)
BLIND SHAFT (Kino International)
THE DREAMERS (Fox Searchlight Pictures)
THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA (Sony/TriStar Pictures)
OSAMA (United Artists)
PERFECT OPPOSITES (MAC Releasing)

An Amazing Couple, the second chapter in the ambitious trilogy from French/Belgian director, Lucas Belvaux, features the same characters from last week’s spy thriller On the Run, but this romantic comedy features a couple experiencing growing pains in their marriage when the wife thinks her husband is cheating on her. Tying into some of the events from the previous film, An Amazing Couple opens in New York and Los Angeles; the final chapter, After the Life, will open next week.

A winner at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Blind Shaft is a low budget Chinese film about two coal miners who extort money from mining companies by befriending other miners who mysteriously die in “accidents”. After playing the festival circuit, this powerful and unique crime drama opens at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday and plays scattered dates in various cities this spring.

Over thirty years after his controversial Last Tango in Paris, Academy Award winning director Bernardo Bertolluci’s The Dreamers stars Michael Pitt (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) as an American student visiting Paris in 1968, where he stays with a brother and sister who challenge him to explore his sexuality. Released with a rare NC-17 rating, the controversial sexually-charged film that might be compared to Last Tango or Intolerable Cruelty, opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday. Check out my review.

Poking fun at the cult horror and sci-fi movies of the 50’s, The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is about a scientist, played by director Larry Blamire, and his wife, who travel to the mountains to explore two mysterious meteors and their deadly alien passengers. Fans of movies like Plan 9 from Outer Space will not want to miss this black and white sci-fi comedy, which opens in Los Angeles this weekend

Written and directed by Siddiq Barma, Osama is the story of a 12-year old Afghan girl whose mother loses her job when the Taliban closes her hospital and then refuses to let them leave their house. Without a man in the house, the girl disguises herself as a boy and journeys across the country. Having won a Golden Globe and been nominated for an Oscar, Osama, the first Afghan film to be shot since the fall of the Taliban, opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend.

Torque’s Martin Henderson plays a law school graduate who falls in love with another student, played by Piper Perabo, in the romantic comedy Perfect Opposites. The two move across country to live together but it spells disaster when their new neighbors, played by Jennifer Tilly and Artie Lange, begin to disrupt their harmonious relationship, as they each question the other’s fidelity. Opening in, of all places, Fresno, California and Richmond, Virginia, the movie also stars Joey “Pants” Pantoliano.

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THIS TIME LAST YEAR

Usually, when two well-publicized movies open on a weekend, there may be some debate over which will win out over the weekend. The obvious favorite this weekend last year seemed to be the sequel to the Jackie Chan-Owen Wilson action-comedy-western, Shanghai Knights, but it ended up bowing in second to a silly romantic comedy starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey. Much to the surprise of many, their battle of the sexes romantic comedy, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, took the weekend with $23 million over Shanghai Knights’ $19 million, probably helped by the 150 extra theatres in which it opened. After over a month in limited and moderate release, Chicago finally expanded nationwide to take advantage of its Golden Globe wins and impending Oscar potential. It had to settle for third place with $10.8 million, having never reigned over the weekend box office, bringing its total gross to just under $64 million. Another romantic comedy, the LL Cool J vehicle, Deliver Us from Eva, attempted to sway the urban market, but its moderate release in just over 1,100 theatres only allowed it to make $6.6 million, so it didn’t make the Top 5. Meanwhile, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers enjoyed its last weekend in the Top 10, as it waited for the Oscar nominations to be announced.

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Next week, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore reunite for the madcap romantic comedy, 50 First Dates, just in time for Valentine’s Day!

Copyright 2004 Edward Douglas