Preview and Projections for the Weekend of May 7, 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 5.06.04

The summer movie season kicks off with its first potential blockbuster in the latest horror update from Stephen (The Mummy) Sommers. Hugh Jackman plays Van Helsing, a monster killer sent to Transylvania to take on Count Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Wolf Man. With a great premise and a proven blockbuster star, anticipation is high for the first big budget effects movie of the summer, but advance negative buzz might keep it from breaking any records. It shouldn’t have any problem taking over the box office from all the recent girlie fare. Speaking of which, New York Minute, the Olsen Sisters’ first big screen movie since It Takes Two brings the girls into Manhattan for a day of fun and adventure. Co-starring Eugene Levy, it’s going to have a tough battle against Lindsay Lohan’s hit comedy, Mean Girls, with both making a play for a distant second place. After two strong weekends, Denzel Washington's Man on Fire is likely to take a tumble while facing its first true competition. Gary Marshall's latest comedy, Raising Helen, starring Kate Hudson, will get sneak previews in 950 theatres on Mother's Day Sunday at 2pm. And the rest of the returning movies? Who cares? It’s the summer and the best is yet to come!

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	New	Van Helsing	$57.0	N/A	3,574	$15,949	1
2	New	New York Minute	$14.5	N/A	3,006	$4,824	1
3	1	Mean Girls	$14.0	-42%	2,972	$4,778	2
4	2	Man on Fire	$8.0	-45%	2,846	$2,811	3
5	3	13 Going on 30	$5.4	-46%	3,158	$1,710	3
6	5	Laws of Attraction	$4.0	-41%	2,449	$1,633	2
7	4	Godsend	$3.1	-54%	2,323	$1,334	2
8	7	Kill Bill Vol. 2	$2.9	-48%	1,952	$1,277	4
9	6	Envy	$2.5	-59%	2,445	$1,022	2
10	8	The Punisher	$1.6	-55%	1,435	$1,045	4
			Est. Weekend Total $112.90	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -50%		Est. Average PTA $3,683

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VAN HELSING (Universal Pictures)
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale, Richard Roxburgh, David Wenham, Shuler Hensley, Will Kemp, Kevin J. O'Connor, Elena Anaya, Silvia Colloca, Josie Maran, Sam West
Directed by: Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, The Mummy Returns)
Rated PG-13
Tagline: “The one name they all fear.”

Hugh Jackman trades his razor sharp claws for razor sharp blades to play the monster-hunter, Gabriel Van Helsing, hired by the church to go to Transylvania to take on Count Dracula (Richard Roxburgh), the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster.

It’s official. The summertime is officially upon us, at least as far as the movie biz is concerned, and what better way to kick it off than an action packed monster movie from the director of two previous summer kick-off movies, the appropriately named Stephen Sommers? In 1999, Sommers’ modernization of the Universal monster movie The Mummy took the box office by storm, grossing over $150 million and putting him on the map as a key player. Two years later, his sequel, The Mummy Returns, became the top non-holiday opening movies (at the time) and grossing over $200 million during its theatrical run. Van Helsing is Sommers’ first movie in three years, and fans of big budget special effects movies cannot wait to see what he pulls out of his sleeves this time.

The tradition of kicking off the summer movie season in early May--weeks before the official June 21^st launch and with most schools still in session--may be traced back to the success of the 1996 movie Twister, directed by Jan De Bont, which earned $41 million the first weekend of May before grossing $241 million total. Although that opening wasn’t even close to the record at the time, studios saw that they could get a decent amount of business before Memorial Day, which previously was considered the start of the summer movie season. Two years later, another disaster movie, Deep Impact, took that opening slot, matching Twister’s opening weekend, but making only $100 million overall. This tradition continued with the first Mummy movies and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe, but 2001 was the year where the box office exploded with more theatres, bigger print counts, and more emphasis being put on big opening weekends. With that in mind, the sequel to The Mummy was primed to crash out of the gate with a $68 million opening weekend. That was nothing next to the following year, in which Spider-Man set a new three-day box office record of $114 million. As of last year, which kicked off with X2: X-Men United (see below), May has become the biggest month for blockbuster releases, three of last year’s biggest opening hit theatres during that month.

Summer Kick-Off Movies:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
X2: X-Men United	5/2/03	3,741	$85.56	$22,871	$214.95
Spider-Man	5/3/02	3,615	$114.84	$31,769	$405.69
The Mummy Returns	5/4/01	3,401	$68.14	$20,035	$202.01
Gladiator	5/5/00	2,938	$34.82	$11,852	$186.61
The Mummy	5/7/99	3,210	$43.37	$13,511	$155.25
Deep Impact	5/8/98	3,156	$41.15	$13,039	$140.46
Twister	5/10/96	2,414	$41.06	$17,009	$241.89

Van Helsing’s two stars have a bit more box office pull than Brendan Fraser did for Sommer's two Mummy movies, although both Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale were virtual unknowns when they appeared in their first summer blockbusters. Jackman’s best career move might have been to take on the role of Wolverine in Bryan Singer’s adaptation of the comic book, The X-Men. It made over $55 million in its opening weekend, creating demand for a sequel three years later, which did even better. (See This Week Last Year.) Beckinsale first got attention starring opposite Ben Affleck in another 2001 blockbuster, Pearl Harbor, which made $75 million over Memorial Day weekend. Oddly, both of them followed their hit movies with forgettable romantic comedies, Jackman with Meg Ryan and Ashley Judd in Kate and Leopold and Someone Like You, Beckinsale with John Cusack in 2001’s Serendipity. With very different target audiences, none of those movies might have any impact on Van Helsing, especially since they’ve both been busier since then. Last year, Jackman blew away sell-out audiences on Broadway and received awards recognition for playing Australian entertainer Peter Allen in “The Boy From Oz”, while Beckinsale solidified her male audience as a vampire in a tight leather outfit in last September’s horror-action movie, Underworld.

Hugh Jackman and Kate Beckinsale:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Kate & Leopold	12/28/01	2,452	$7.57	$9.73	$3,966	$47.10
Someone Like You	3/30/01	2,345		$10.01	$4,269	$27.23
The X-Men	7/14/00	3,025		$54.47	$18,007	$157.30
Underworld	9/19/03	2,915		$21.75	$7,462	$51.48
Serendipity	10/5/01	2,601		$13.31	$5,117	$50.26
Pearl Harbor	5/25/01	3,214		$59.08	$18,382	$198.54

With no offense to Kate and Hugh, the real stars of the movie are the Universal Monsters who have become cultural icons in the seventy-three (!!) years since their debut on the big screen. If nothing else, it would be hard to find a person over the age of ten who doesn’t recognize a picture of Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula or Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. Both creatures had their origins in 19^th century literature, before Universal brought Bram Stoker’s vampire, Count Dracula, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, to the screen in two 1931 film classics. The movies spawned a number of sequels throughout the 30’s and 40’s, and the 1941 introduction of The Wolf Man, played by Lon Chaney, created a significant trio of monsters that began appearing in movies like Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman and the comedy classic, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, which featured all three creatures. Universal recently re-released three DVD collections of those classic movies, many of which have never been available on DVD, to remind people of how great these creatures were.

Others have tried bringing the classic characters to the big screen over the years, including art legend Andy Warhol and Britain’s Hammer Studios. In 1979, Universal tried to revive the Dracula character with a remake starring then unknown Frank Langella, but they were trumped in 1992, when Columbia Pictures figured out how to release their own version of the vampire king with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which earned over $30 million opening weekend. Two years later, the studio’s attempt to revive Mary Shelley’s classic with Robert De Niro as the Frankenstein creature, didn’t make that amount in its entire theatrical run. In the years since, vampire movies continue to be popular time and time again, as seen by adaptations of Anne Rice’s novels Interview with a Vampire and Queen of the Damned, and the aforementioned Underworld.

Creature Features:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Hulk	6/20/03	3,660		$62.13	$16,975	$132.12
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen	7/11/03	3,002		$23.08	$7,687	$66.46
Planet of the Apes	7/27/01	3,500		$68.53	$19,581	$180.01
Godzilla	5/22/98	3,310	$18.53	$44.74	$13,517	$136.31
Queen of the Damned	2/22/02	2,511		$14.76	$5,878	$30.31
Interview with a Vampire	11/11/94	2,604		$36.39	$13,975	$105.26
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein	11/4/94	2,177		$11.21	$5,149	$22.01
Bram Stoker's Dracula	11/13/92	2,491		$30.52	$12,252	$82.49

The bad news is that the reaction to the trailer and commercials have been mixed. The computer-generated creatures and fast-paced action have wowed some people, but others have noted comparisons with two of last summer’s disappointments, The Hulk and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Advance reviews on Internet fan sites like Harry Knowles’ Ain’t-It-Cool-News have not been promising, claiming the movie has too many special effects, and is lacking a good story or decent acting. Apparently, moviegoers have become slightly more jaded and critical then they were when The Mummy Returns came out, and the critics will probably be merciless. Still, this stuff won’t make that big a difference for a popcorn movie like this, since there are enough people looking forward to this that they’ll ignore the naysayers in order to decide for themselves. The opening weekend box office for bad word-of-mouth movies like Roland Emmeric’s Godzilla and The Hulk last year should be proof enough.

Universal knows that they have a potentially big franchise movie in Van Helsing, something made apparent when they included a four-page fold-out insert offering the first glimpse of the updated creatures in trade magazines almost a year ago. Even before the movie opens, an animated prequel on DVD is set for release, as well as a video game, a comic book tie-in, and NBC is even developing the pilot for a spin-off series to be called “Transylvania”, executive produced by David Fury of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Obviously, there are high hopes for this movie to do well, and in its favor, it will be the first PG-13 action movie since Hellboy and Walking Tall early in April, so the younger male teen set that have had almost nothing to see will be flocking to this one for sure. On top of that, the dashing Hugh Jackman should be able to bring women in to see the movie, as will the romance of the movie's gothic setting, making this much more than a geeky fanboy type movie.

Even so, Van Helsing is shaping up to be this year’s Hulk, a movie with a lot of anticipation being kept in check by negative advance buzz. That might keep it from breaking any records this weekend, but the lack of big effects movies should make it the perfect summer kick-off popcorn movie, allowing it to make somewhere between the two Mummy movies, maybe just over $55 million. That success will be fleeting as bad word-of-mouth and the opening of Troy will also make it the first of the summer one-week wonders.

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NEW YORK MINUTE (Warner Brothers)
Starring: Ashley Olsen, Mary-Kate Olsen, Eugene Levy, Andy Richter, Andrea Martin, Darrell Hammond, Jared Padalecki, Riley Smith, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Mary Bond Davis, A Simple Plan, Jack Osbourne
Directed by: Dennie Gordon (What A Girl Wants)
Rated PG

Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen play Jane and Roxy Ryan, twin sisters who couldn’t be anything more unlike each other. Jane is a studious over-achiever while Roxy is a wild troublemaking rocker. Despite their differences, the two of them spend a wacky day in New York City being chased by a truant officer (Eugene Levy), a Chinese bootlegging ring, and a couple of cute guys.

The duo that magazines have dubbed the “Human Truman Show” are back up on the big screen nine years after their disappointing theatrical release, It Takes Two. In that time, Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen have gotten older and wiser, taking control of their careers and earning as much respect for their endeavors as they have ridicule from those freaked out by their achievements. Of course, no one thought seventeen years ago, that the two babies sharing the role of a young Michelle Tanner on the television sitcom, “Full House”, would grow up to be media moguls. Unlike other child stars, who either fade away into obscurity or become tabloid fodder, the Olsens managed their money and business well to create an empire of straight-to-video movies, clothes, and other merchandise that has them estimated to be worth $150 million EACH. They even have their own toothpaste.

The two of them have been everywhere over the last few months from the cover of popular magazines like “People” to television shows, and despite having had only one theatrical release, they even got their own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame last week. Much of the recent Olsen mania has been an effort to clear up any misconceptions people might have as the two reach their 18^th birthday on June 13th, at which point they will officially be made the co-Presidents of their multi-million dollar company, DualStar Entertainment. Of course, fame has its price and the two teen girls also have a scary amount of older male fans waiting for them to turn legal for reasons we can only imagine.

New York Minute director Dennie Gordon is moving up a step in the ladder from her last movie, What A Girl Wants starring Nickelodeon star Amanda Bynes, which grossed $36 million last April. A few weeks later, Hillary Duff, star of the popular Disney cable show, “Lizzie McGuire”, hit the big screen with The Lizzie McGuire Movie, offered as counter-programming to X2: X-Men United as the summer opening movie. It earned a whopping $17 million in its opening weekend proving Duff’s draw. At this point in their careers, the Olsens are bigger and better known than either Bynes or Duff, and having the advantage of being known to the parents, as well as the kids and teens. Having already made movies based around Rome, Paris and London, the Olsens’ trip to New York City, the greatest city in the world--granted, I’m biased--should be the perfect premise for their return to the silver screen.

Tween Queens:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
It Takes Two	11/17/95	1,581	$5.56	$3,517	$19.47
Chasing Liberty	1/9/04	2400	6.081	2534	12.189
What a Girl Wants	4/4/03	2,964	$11.43	$3,858	$35.99
The Lizzie McGuire Movie	5/2/03	2,825	$17.34	$6,138	$42.67
Crossroads	2/15/02	2,380	$17.01	$7,149	$37.19

Success on video doesn’t always translate to box office success, though, as seen by a number of video stars that could not make the jump to the big screen. Despite selling millions of tapes, neither Barney nor Clifford the Big Red Dog were able to bring them into theatres, and Winnie the Pooh’s pal who starred in The Tigger Movie did well over the time, but not necessarily opening weekend. For the most part, parents will buy the videos and then plop their kids in front of the television to keep them out of trouble, as they watch them over and over. Shelling out money to bring the kids to a potentially packed theatre is another story, and rarely, do movies and stars that do well on video do even better in theatres. One of the few recent exceptions was Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie, which had a profitable opening weekend in moderate release. Fortunately, the Olsens’ female teen and ‘tween audiences are driven to see the movies with their idols as soon as they hit the theatres, as proven by last week’s Mean Girls, so New York Minute should continue the trend.

Kid Vids:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Clifford's Really Big Movie	4/23/04	471	$1.15	$0.66	$1,397	$1.80
Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie	10/4/02	940		$6.20	$6,597	$25.57
The Tigger Movie	2/11/00	2,723		$9.43	$3,463	$45.54
Barney's Great Adventure	4/3/98	809	$3.50	$1.38	$1,706	$12.22

The Olsens have a few secret weapons that could help sway the 30-something parents wondering whether to through this movie with the kids, the biggest of them being Eugene Levy as truant officer Max Lomax. In the last five years, Levy has broken out as a popular comic star by appearing in three “American Pie” movies as well as the hilarious “mockumentaries” from director Christopher Guest, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind. If that resume wasn’t impressive enough, Levy stole many scenes in the Steve Martin-Queen Latifah comedy, Bringing Down the House. Levy’s comic schtick is very popular among adults, and wisely, he’s been prominently featured in the ads. That can't be said for some of Levy's co-stars, which include his former SCTV cast mate Andrea Martin, who most people loved in Nia Vardalas’ blockbuster indie comedy, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Conan O’Brien’s former sidekick, Andy Richter.

Eugene Levy/Andrea Martin:

Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
A Mighty Wind	4/18/03	133	$0.62	$2.11	$15,880	$17.58
Best in Show	10/20/00	497	$4.61	$2.16	$4,346	$18.52
Bringing Down the House	3/7/03	2,801		$31.10	$11,104	$132.68
American Wedding	8/1/03	3,172		$33.37	$10,520	$104.35
American Pie 2	8/10/01	3,063		$45.12	$14,729	$145.10
American Pie	7/9/99	2,507		$18.71	$7,463	$101.74
My Big Fat Greek Wedding	8/2/02	657	$37.17	$3.00	$4,569	$185.24

New York Minute is the kind of movie that parents are going to hate, but younger kids are going to love, and younger girls will do whatever they can to persuade their parents to see it. With a number of movies geared towards teen girls already in theatres, New York Minute could be facing a bit of a challenge, but the appeal of the Olsens to kids and teens raised on their videos should give this enough of a younger demographic to avoid any problems with competition. With little to no crossover audience with the weekend’s other big movie Van Helsing, look for New York Minute to make $13 to 15 million opening weekend.

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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.

A FOREIGN AFFAIR (Innovation Films)
GOJIRA (Rialto Pictures)
THE MUDGE BOY (Strand Releasing)
OASIS (Lifesize Entertainment)
OFF THE LIP (Abandon Pictures)
SEEING OTHER PEOPLE (Lantern Lane Entertainment)
STILL, WE BELIEVE: THE BOSTON RED SOX MOVIE (ThinkFilm)
SUPER SIZE ME (Samuel Goldwyn Films)
VALENTIN (Miramax Films)

After the death of their mother, two Midwestern brothers, played by David Arquette and Tim Blake Nelson, join a matchmaking trip to Russia in hopes of finding a woman to do their housecleaning in A Foreign Affair. This oddball comedy, which also stars Emily Mortimer, opens in limited release this weekend.

The mother of all monster movies returns to American shores as an uncut version of the 1954 classic, Gojira--beter known over here as Godzilla--gets a 50^th Anniversary re-release. The post-nuclear Japanese film about a 400-foot monster with radioactive breath awakened during nuclear testing and unleashed on Tokyo can be seen in New York and San Francisco this Friday, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. next weekend and across the States this summer.

A product of the Sundance Film Festival’s Screenwriter and Filmmaker Labs, The Mudge Boy stars Emile Hirsch (The Girl Next Door) as a teenager living on a farm who takes on the personality of his mother after she dies. Since the behavior includes dressing and talking like hser and carrying around her pet chicken, his distraught father gets a bit worried. The Mudge Boy opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend.

The Korean romantic fantasy Oasis is about a delivery boy who falls in love with the Cerebral Palsy stricken daughter of a man his older brother killed in a hit and run accident. Lee-Chang Dong’s complex dramedy about finding love in rather odd places opens in New York on Friday.

In Off the Lip, Marguerite Moreau plays Kat journalism student sent to Hawaii on assignment to find an elusive surfer named “The Monk”, but her ex-boyfriend and the unhelpful locals make it more difficult. This wacky surfing comedy from Robert Mickelson opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday.

In Seeing Other People, Jay Mohr and Julianne Nicholson play a couple that decide to sleep with other people before getting married, much to the shock of their friends played by Andy Richter, Lauren Graham and Josh Charles. This raunchy romantic comedy by director Wally Wolodarsky and his wife Maya Forbes, opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend. MY REVIEW

Boston baseball fans (i.e. masochists) might get a bit more motivated for the season by seeing Still, We Believe, Paul Doyle Jr.’s documentary, about the Boston Red Sox 2003 season from spring training to their American League championship match-up with their arch-rivals, the New York Yankees. It opens in 16 theatres in Boston this weekend and elsewhere on May 21.

Super Size Me, Morgan Spurlock’s in-depth documentary about American obesity and its relationship to fast food, opens in a number of cities this weekend. Spurlock made himself a test subject with the ultimatum to only eat McDonalds’ food for an entire month. A hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Super Size Me has created quite an impact with McDonalds’ discontinuing their “super size” meals shortly before their CEO died of a heart attack. MY REVIEW

Valentin is an Argentine drama about a daydreaming ten-year-old boy, living with his grandmother in 1969 Argentina after being separated from his eccentric parents. This quirky film, which should appeal to those who enjoyed Amelie, opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend.

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THIS TIME LAST YEAR

Last summer kicked off with the sequel to one of the first big comic book movies of the 21^st Century, as X2: X-Men United. After an incredible opening day take of $31 million, the third highest ever, X2 became the fourth biggest opening movie of all time with its $85.6 million weekend take. This also made it the second biggest May opener after the previous year’s Spider-Man, although that honor would be fleeting once The Matrix Reloaded opened a few weeks later. Hilary Duff’s popular character from the Disney cable show traveled to Italy for her big screen debut, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, which made over $17 million in its opening weekend to take a distant second place. Entering the Top 10 at the bottom position after seven weeks in limited release, the hit British hit soccer comedy, Bend It Like Beckham, made $1.47 million over the weekend in 483 theatres. The majority of the returning movies had significant drop-offs with one of the smallest ones being the previous week’s #1, Identity with its 42% drop-off.

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Next week: Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana declare all-out war in the historic Greek epic, Troy, and Jamie Foxx is Breakin’ All the Rules in his new romantic comedy.

Copyright 2004 Edward Douglas