Preview and Projections for the Weekend of March 5, 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 - final update 3.4.04

For the first time in 2004, there is the potential for three movies to make over $20 million this weekend, something rarely seen outside of the summer or December holidays. The big question is whether last week’s hype for Mel Gibson’s religious epic, The Passion of The Christ , which made over $80 million in its first weekend, will be able to carry its amazing buz over to a second weekend or whether the difficult viewing experience will drive audiences to see some of the new movies. Whether moviegoers want to be saved or whether they want to be entertained, this weekend’s other two strong openers should be able to fill in the gaps. Opening in slightly more theatres, the Todd Phillips remake of the 70’s television show, Starsky and Hutch, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, stands a good chance at getting a wide audience of younger comedy fans, allowing it to make just over $25 million. Viggo Mortensen takes on his first post-Lord of the Rings leading role with an action adventure set in the Arabian desert in the horse racing movie, Hidalgo. Both new movies would probably do better during the summer market, but they’ll be splitting audiences and having trouble getting audiences away from The Passion of The Christ, as it retains the top spot for a second weekend in a row. This past weekend’s big Oscar winner, The Lord of the Rings, reenters the Top 10, as New Line relaunches it back into 1,900 theatres. Likewise, Mystic RIver and Charlize Theron's Monster should get a bump from their awards wins, which could help one or both reenter the Top 10.

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# of Theaters	Average	Week
1	1	The Passion of The Christ	$49.5	-41%	3,130	$15,815	2
2	New	Starsky and Hutch	$26.5	N/A	3,185	$8,320	1
3	New	Hidalgo	$20.0	N/A	3,063	$6,530	1
4	2	50 First Dates	$7.0	-45%	3,040	$2,303	4
5	3	Twisted	$4.4	-50%	2,704	$1,627	2
6	4	Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen	$4.0	-35%	2,180	$1,835	3
7	11	Lord of the Rings: Return of the King	$3.8	65%	1,903	$1,997	12
8	5	Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights	$3.5	-40%	2,042	$1,714	2
9	16	Monster	$2.8	30%	1,082	$2,588	11
10	6	Miracle	$2.6	43%	1,654	$2,430	5
			Est. Weekend Total $124.10	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -20%		Est. Average PTA $4,430

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HIDALGO (Touchstone Pictures)
Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Omar Sharif, Zuleikha Robinson, Louise Lombard, Said Taghmaoui, Adam Alexi-Malle, Peter Mensah, J.K. Simmons, Malcolm McDowell
Directed by: Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, Jurassic Park III, Jumanji, October Sky)
Rated PG-13
Tagline: “Unbridled. Unbroken. Unbeaten.”

In his first role since The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Viggo Mortensen plays Frank T. Hopkins, a U.S. dispatch rider and cowboy who is invited by a wealthy Sheik to enter the Ocean of Fire, a 3,000 mile race across the Arabian Desert against the world’s greatest Bedouin riders and their horses. Along with his horse Hidalgo, Hopkins must face the odds to finish the race not only for the honor and glory, but also for his very survival.

You have to commend Disney and Touchstone Pictures for their desire to develop original ideas and sorely overlooked genres like the classic action-adventure movie. The latest in a long line of films set during the 19^th Century, Hidalgo mixes some of the best parts of two crowd-pleasing movies, Seabiscuit and Raiders of the Lost Ark, to create something that a wide audience might enjoy.

Although younger people will immediately think of the two Mummy movies when they see the movie’s desert setting, the first Indiana Jones movie would be a better comparison. Its star Harrison Ford was coming off his appearance in a duo of blockbuster genre films, George Lucas’ Star Wars and The Return of the Jedi, when he was cast by Lucas and Steven Spielberg for their 40’s action adventure. You would expect that a movie made by two Hollywood giants would do well, and Raiders of the Lost Ark grossed over $200 million, becoming one of the decade’s most popular movies. Its two sequels in 1984 and 1987 also did very well opening weekend, although not quite as well overall.

Like the Indiana Jones series, the big selling point for Hidalgo will be its star, and this seems like the perfect vehicle for Viggo Mortensen, who makes his first appearance since playing the warrior Aragorn in the three blockbuster Lord of the Rings movies, each of which grossed over $300 million. The latest installment even swept the Oscars this past Sunday. This role shouldn’t be too much of a stretch as once again he finds himself on the back of a horse. After playing small parts in many movies during the 90’s, including a number of Westerns, Viggo first received attention for his role in the 1998 Hitchcock remake A Perfect Murder, starring Michael Douglas. He barely had time to capitalize on it before traveling to New Zealand to film Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy over the next two years, but from his first appearance in the first movie, Viggo was a fan favorite, especially among the women who flocked to see the movie.

Viggo’s Rings compatriot, Orlando Bloom, benefited from the fame that comes from appearing in the Tolkien trilogy when he co-starred with Johnny Depp in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. With a impressive opening last summer and incredible word-of-mouth, it became the #3 movie of 2003. While a lot of that could be attributed to Depp, who even has received an Oscar nomination for his role, there is no question that Bloom’s younger female fans helped and Viggo’s older women should do the same for this one. This also should help translate into great success for Mortensen’s career, much like it did for Harrison Ford after the Star Wars movies, as he took on the role of Indiana Jones.

Another strong comparison for Hidalgo is one of last year’s biggest surprise hits, Seabiscuit, starring Tobey Maguire. Based on a best-selling book, Gary Ross’ film captured the imagination of the nation much like the original horse did almost eighty years earlier, and it helped to have a star appearing in a movie for the first time since his own hit movie, Spider-Man. The movie was memorable enough to get nominated for a number of Academy Awards including Best Picture despite opening earlier in the year.

Originally scheduled for last fall and then moved to the spring take advantage of the finale of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Hidalgo is opening against a movie with much stronger promotion that doesn’t necessarily look like it will be as good a movie. Still, Starsky and Hutch does have the attention of young audiences, so Hidalgo will be counting on older audiences and women to help its opening weekend. It will be hard, since both movies have something for all audiences, but enough people should be sick of dumb comedies and 70’s television remakes, not to mention Owen Wilson, to make this their first choice. Both movies would do better during the summer, but there has to be a reason that Disney didn’t hold this back a few months to try to have another summer breakout hit ala Pirates of the Caribbean. Disney is a shrewd company though, and somehow, they got the trailer for Hidalgo shown by many theatres in front of last week’s blockbuster, The Passion of The Christ, so awareness will be high.

There has been a bit of a backlash to the movie’s statement that it is “based on a true story” with a number of historians claiming that much of this story was fictionalized, having never happened. While that shouldn’t matter much for those looking for a bit of action and adventure, it does take a bit away from the excitement of watching the movie when one realizes it never happened.

With a strong box office star who could be considered this century’s Harrison Ford, Hidalgo will give Starsky and Hutch more competition than some expect. Whether or not those that might enjoy this movie will know about it for opening weekend is another story, and its business will be a bit lighter than if it opened during the summertime. The action-adventure and special effects should be a big draw for Viggo’s legion of new fans, which should allow Hidalgo to take third place with between $19 and 21 million.

Related Comparisons:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King	12/19/03	3,703	$51.47	$72.62	$19,614	$345.33
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers	12/20/02	3,622	$40.04	$61.50	$16,980	$337.26
The Lord of the Rings : Fellowship of the Rings	12/21/01	3,359	$27.91	$47.21	$14,055	$304.11
A Perfect Murder	6/5/98	2,845		$16.62	$5,842	$67.63
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl	7/11/03	3,269	$24.00	$46.63	$14,264	$305.41
Seabiscuit	7/25/03	1,987		$20.85	$10,495	$120.20
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade	5/26/89	2,327	$9.90	$37.03	$15,913	$197.17
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom	5/24/84	1,687		$25.33	$15,019	$179.87
Raiders of the Lost Ark	6/12/81	1,078		$8.30	$7,705	$209.56
The Mummy Returns	5/4/01	3,401		$68.14	$20,035	$202.01
The Mummy	5/7/99	3,210		$43.37	$13,511	$155.25

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STARSKY AND HUTCH (Warner Brothers)
Starring: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Snoop Dogg, Vince Vaughn, Carmen Electra, Juliette Lewis, Chris Penn, Molly Sims, Amy Smart, Fred Williamson, Jason Bateman, Terry Crewes, Richard Edson, Daniel Dae Kim, David Pressman
Directed by: Todd Phillips (Road Trip, Old School)
Rated PG-13
Tagline: “They are the man.”

Based on the popular 70’s action show of the same name, Starsky and Hutch reteams Detectives David Starsky and Ken Hutchinson, this time played by long-time buddies Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. This “prequel” to the television show presents the origins of their long running partnership, as they are thrown together on a case involving a shady entrepreneur (Vince Vaughn).

Starsky and Hutch is the latest in a long line of attempts to reinvent popular television shows from yesteryear for the big screen to try to create new potential franchises. Television inspired movies are nothing new and taking an existing property and reinventing or modernizing it has created some surprise hits over the last few years, most notably recent successes like S.W.A.T. and Charlie’s Angels.

Instead of modernizing Starsky and Hutch, director Todd Phillips has decided to keep it set during the 70’s, turning the action-packed police show into a straight action-comedy that spoofs the era and a genre that has become such a staple in Hollywood. It harks back to an early attempt to update a classic television show with a different spin, 1987’s Dragnet, which teamed Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd for a comedic version of the television police drama. More recently, this was done with Betty Thomas’ big screen version of I Spy, also starring Owen Wilson with Eddie Murphy; it was not received nearly as well. There are few directors that can pull something like this off, but after two hit comedies—Road Trip and Old School--Phillips is quickly becoming a comedy director like Austin Powers’ Jay Roach, whose involvement in a project almost guarantees laughs. After this movie, Phillips will make another attempt at updating a television classic, when he directs Jim Carrey in a movie version of The Six Million Dollar Man, also presumably taking a more comic route than the original.

The key to this movie’s success is lying on the two popular stars appearing in their fifth movie together. Stiller, the son of the popular comedy duo, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, first got his break with “The Ben Stiller Show”, his sketch comedy show that appeared first on FOX and then MTV. His directorial debut Reality Bites, with Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke, also struck a chord with young audiences ten years ago. The turning point in Stiller’s career came when he starred in the Farrelly Brothers romantic comedy, There’s Something About Mary, one of the biggest comedy hits of 1998. A few years later, when Stiller was teamed with Robert DeNiro in Jay Roach’s comedy Meet the Parents, they managed to recapture that success, but few of his other movies have done nearly as well up until January’s Along Came Polly, a romantic comedy with “Friends” star Jennifer Aniston. Stiller’s busy year continues with the April comedy Envy with Jack Black, and the misfortunately titled Dodgeball: a True Underdog Story in June. Supposedly, he’ll be wrapping up his year with a sequel to his hit comedy with DeNiro, Meet the Fockers.

After both actors appeared in Stiller’s little seen indie drama Permanent Midnight, Wilson played the former boyfriend of Stiller’s fiancé in the hit comedy Meet the Parents. Few thought that they would be seeing the dawning of a new comedy team, but Wilson took on a prominent role in Stiller’s fashion model parody, Zoolander, and then the two appeared in Wes Anderson’s highly regarded indie comedy, The Royal Tenenbaums in 2001. Even before they were brought together, Wilson got attention in Hollywood, first in Anderson’s indie debut, Bottle Rocket, and then in big horror movies like Anaconda and The Haunting. His pairing with Jackie Chan in 2000’s comedy-Western Shanghai Noon defied the odds makers by making almost $20 million on a Memorial Day weekend against the much bigger blockbuster, Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible 2. Last year, the two were reunited for Shanghai Knights which did slightly better, although not nearly as well as Chan’s biggest hits, Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2.

Despite their many successes, both actors have had major bombs in the last year, Stiller with Duplex with Drew Barrymore, and Wilson more recently with The Big Bounce. Apparently, the ladies like Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson quite a bit, although one has to wonder whether they’d pick a male-oriented action comedy over something a bit more epic like dreamy Viggo in Hidalgo.

And then of course, you have some of the best casting in recent memory: rapper Snoop Dogg as their pimp informant, Huggy Bear. The protégé of N.W.A. founder Dr. Dre, Snoop made his mark on the world of hip hop before jumping to B-movies like the horror film, Bones, and Dr. Dre’s urban comedy, The Wash. Their weak performance cannot be held against the number of people who love Dogg’s bits in the trailer and commercials, which always get the biggest laughs. Todd Phillips also brought back a couple of the stars of his last hit comedy, Old School, with Vince Vaughan playing the bad guy and an uncredited cameo appearance by Will Ferrell, coming off one of his biggest hits, the blockbuster family comedy, Elf.

March has seen a number of successful comedies, including last year’s Bringing Down the House and Jim Carrey’s Liar Liar. Starsky and Hutch seems to owe more to recent buddy cop comedies such as Showtime or Hollywood Homicide, two weaker comedies that showed a drop in interest in this tired genre.

Unlike many of the other big comedies of the last year, the movie doesn’t offer anything new. The repeat pairing of Stiller and Wilson insures that there isn’t even the freshness of a chemistry that makes the movie a must-see. Stiller’s popularity is especially susceptible to whom he is working with as well as the genre. Like Adam Sandler’s pairing with Jack Nicholson in Anger Management last year, the draw of a broad comedy with Robert DeNiro would be a given, as would a romantic comedy with a hot television star like Jennifer Aniston. They both would have a wider mainstream appeal than a retro 70’s police comedy like this one. Unlike Along Came Polly, the movie has only had a few months lead time to get the word out, so it’s coming into the weekend at a bit of a disadvantage. Warner Brothers has made up for this with a number of sneak previews to help build up advance buzz and word-of-mouth, and the two guys appeared on the Academy Awards show to do a bit of lame schtick. Other than that, their marketing campaign consists mainly of commercials showing the movie’s tongue-in-cheek 70’s jokes, which really don’t seem that much funnier than the Eddie Murphy-Owen Wilson quips from I Spy.(Update: Having actually seen the movie, I have to say that the movie is much funnier than the commercials and trailer make it lookand older males will definitely get a kick out of some of the gags that younger moviegoers probably won't get.)

Besides Ben Stiller, the main thing going for this movie is the name brand recognition of the television show, which could help get older male fans, although the comedy reinvention of the show might be a bigger turn-off. With that in mind, the success of Starsky and Hutch relies heavily on whether the younger set gets behind the movie and decides it’s worth seeing. While this could do well, both stars have been heavily saturated in the last few months, and the premise has a been-there-done-that feel that most could get from watching “That 70’s Show”. Still, it should be able to have a decent opening weekend between $25 and 27 million and word-of-mouth should be decent.

Related Comparisons:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Along Came Polly	1/16/04	2,984		$27.72	$9,289	$84.95
Duplex	9/26/03	2,189		$4.62	$2,111	$9.61
The Royal Tenenbaums	1/4/02	751	$12.19	$8.51	$11,344	$52.35
Zoolander	9/28/01	2,507		$15.70	$6,262	$45.16
Meet the Parents	10/6/00	2,614		$28.62	$10,949	$166.23
Shanghai Knights	2/7/03	2,753		$19.60	$7,121	$60.47
I Spy	11/1/02	3,182		$12.75	$4,008	$33.11
Shanghai Noon	5/26/00	2,711		$15.61	$5,758	$56.90
Old School	2/21/03	2,689		$17.45	$6,491	$75.16
Road Trip	5/19/00	2,530		$15.48	$6,119	$68.53
S.W.A.T.	8/8/03	3,202		$37.06	$11,575	$116.64
Charlie's Angels	11/3/00	3,037		$40.13	$13,214	$125.31
The Mod Squad	3/26/99	2,290		$6.07	$2,651	$13.26
Dragnet	6/26/87	1,337		$10.50	$7,885	$57.38
Hollywood Homicide	6/13/03	2,840		$11.11	$3,914	$30.21
Showtime	3/15/02	2,917		$15.01	$5,142	$37.95

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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.

THE RECKONING (Paramount Classics)

Noted actors Paul Bettany, Willem Dafoe and Brian Cox star in the The Reckoning, a film set in 14^th Century England in which a fugitive priest (Bettany) joins a troupe of traveling actors to stage a recreation of the crimes of witchcraft and murder sentenced against a smalltown woman. With the help of the priest, they get to the truth behind the trial, helping him to find redemption in the process. The Reckoning opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend.

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THIS TIME LAST YEAR

Two prominent new movies kicked off March last year, a comedy and an action movie. One of the oddest pairings in a recent comedy had to be veteran comic Steve Martin facing off against rapper/talk-show host Queen Latifah in the opposites attract comedy, Bringing Down the House. With great advance buzz from the trailer and their upcoming Oscar show appearances, the movie was able to make over $31 million opening weekend, making it the second biggest March opening comedy after Jim Carrey’s Liar Liar. Antoine Fuqua, director of Denzel Washington’s Training Day, teamed with Bruce Willis for the war film, Tears of the Sun, which came in second with $17 million, a rather wide margin. Of the returning movies, Chicago continued to do well as it got closer to Oscar time, as did Todd Phillips’ Old School.

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Next week, three new movies vie for audience attention. Frankie Muniz returns as the teen secret agent in Agent Cody Banks 2: Destination London, while ultra-hot Johnny Depp stars in the Steven King thriller, Secret Window and David (State and Main) Mamet takes on a political thriller with Spartan.

Copyright 2003 Edward Douglas