Coming Soon! - The Weekend Warrior

Preview and Projections for the Weekend of February 25, 2005
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 2.24.05

In the last week of the shortest month of the year, Wes Craven tries to take on Neo and Big Willie in their surname movies with his latest teen horror film Cursed, which explores his own unique take on werewolf curses with the help of Scream-writer Kevin Williamson. The slew of successful horror movies could help, but the genre may already be getting too crowded for this “old school” (as in late 90’s) horror movie that has been plagued with problems. Expect a bit of deja vu as Cursed wins on Friday then loses for the weekend against the comedy powerhouse Hitch. Black History Month comes to an end with two movies targeted towards African-American audiences, although the appearance by popular comic Cedric the Entertainer in Tommy Lee Jones’ cheerleader comedy Man of the House may be too minimal a part for his fans to bother. On the other hand, playwright Tyler Perry’s strong reputation among the African-American community should help Diary of a Mad Black Woman starring Kimberly Elise (Woman, Thou Art Loosed) and his popular gun-toting granny Madea in her big screen debut. Despite a rather low-key release, it should bring plenty of angry black women into theatres its opening weekend. Historically, the last weekend in February has always been slow until Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ coup last year (see This Time Last Year), and the Academy Awards on Sunday night probably won’t help, since it will cut into the weekend business of some of the movies.

TW

LW

Title

Weekend (in millions)

Change

# Of Theaters

Average

Week

1

1

Hitch

$18.5

-41%

3,571

$5,181

3

2

New

Cursed

$16.8

N/A

2,805

$5,989

1

3

2

Constantine

$15.2

-49%

3,020

$5,033

2

4

New

Diary of a Mad Black Woman

$7.8

N/A

1,483

$5,260

1

5

New

Man of the House

$7.5

N/A

2,422

$3,097

1

6

3

Because of Winn-Dixie

$6.0

-41%

3,188

$1,882

2

7

5

Million Dollar Baby

$5.5

-19%

2,150

$2,558

11

8

6

Are We There Yet?

$3.9

-40%

2,242

$1,740

6

9

4

Son of the Mask

$3.7

-50%

2,966

$1,247

2

10

8

The Aviator

$3.0

-27%

1,579

$1,900

3

Est. Weekend Total
$87.90

Est. Avg. Drop-Off
-38%

Est. Average PTA
$3,392

"I knew I shouldn't have gotten in the middle of this catfight."

CURSED (Dimension Films)
Starring: Christina Ricci, Joshua Jackson, Judy Greer, Portia de Rossi, Jesse Eisenberg, Shannon Elizabeth, Milo Ventimiglia, Mya
Directed by: Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Hills Have Eyes, Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Shocker, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, The Last House on the Left)
Genres: Horror, werewolf
Rated PG -13
Theatre Count: 2,805
Tagline: “What Doesn’t Kill You, Makes You Stronger”

Two siblings (Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg) crash their car trying to avoid something large in the road. Though relatively uninjured in the accident, they find themselves having increased strength and senses, as well as being a draw to the opposite sex. Their new powers don’t come without a heavy price, as they try to find out what really happened that fateful night.

Cursed is probably the best way to describe the latest collaboration from director Wes Craven and North Carolina born writer Kevin Williamson, who first teamed together for the 1996 horror hit Scream and collaborated on two more successful sequels, kicking off a teen horror craze in the latter part of the 20^th Century. Despite their earlier success, Cursed has been plagued with well-publicized problems from the get-go. Even before shooting began, Dimension Films, who profited well from the Scream films, had set a summer 2003 release date for the movie, but midway through shooting, production grounded to a halt with rumors that the studio wasn’t happy with the effects of the ending. After a few months off, Craven began reshooting almost the entire movie in November 2003 with some of the original actors being edited out of the story altogether. (I’m not sure that horror fans will feel deprived by not getting the planned Scott Baio and Corey Feldman appearances.) As the film progressed, Dimension’s plans for a Halloween 2004 release were scuppered when it was mysteriously moved to the winter, although Scream 3 was a success in that time period five years ago. Usually, this many problems and release date changes might disturb horror fans, although one only has to look back at last summer’s Exorcist: The Beginning to see a film that was made twice with two different directors and still brought in the horror fans.

Fortunately, Wes Craven’s name has become synonymous with horror long before Scream, since he had been making slasher flicks for thirty years with such B-movie classics as The Hills Have Eyes and Last House on the Left. These led up to the director’s most famous film, A Nightmare on Elm Street, which introduced murderous dreammeister Freddy Krueger to the world in 198. A half dozen sequels followed, leading up to the 2003 horror hit Freddy vs. Jason, but by then Craven had already moved onto other things. After a few failed follow-ups to Nightmare (including Wes Craven’s New Nightmare), Craven’s career was renewed when he directed Kevin Williamson’s screenplay for Scream. It allowed Craven to find a new audience of young horror fans, and started a craze that saw the release of copycats like Urban Legends and Valentine before the genre petered out a few years ago. Scream also led to a hugely successful comedy franchise with the Wayans Brothers taking Craven’s original working title Scary Movie and kicking off their own series of horror spoofs. Craven pretty much disappeared only putting his name on a few films to try to help them.

Scream did wonders for Williamson’s career, as his next horror screenplay I Know What You Did Last Summer also found its share of horror fans doing well enough to warrant its own sequel, and he also wrote The Faculty for director Robert Rodriguez. In a rather unusual departure, Williamson turned to television, writing and producing the WB drama “Dawson’s Creek” and then bringing the show’s star Katie Holmes onto his next project, his directorial debut Teaching Mrs. Tingle. Although “Dawson’s Creek” has kept going, Williamson has been laying low in recent years, and Cursed should be interesting to horror fans if only because it’s his first collaboration with Craven in almost five years.

Craven and Williamson
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Scream 3	2/4/00	3,465	$34.71	$10,017	$88.36
Scream 2	12/12/97	2,663	$33.00	$12,392	$101.36
Scream	12/20/96	1,413	$6.35	$4,494	$103.03
Wes Craven's New Nightmare	10/14/94	1,850	$6.67	$3,605	$18.05
Teaching Mrs. Tingle	8/20/99	1,710	$3.33	$1,947	$8.91
I Still Know What You Did Last Summer	11/13/98	2,443	$16.50	$6,754	$40.00
I Know What You Did Last Summer	10/17/97	2,524	$15.82	$6,268	$72.22

For their reunion, they’ve decided to do for werewolf movies what they did for slasher flicks almost ten years earlier. This is a smart move, since it’s a horror subgenre that has fallen by the wayside. Except for the use of the creatures in the indie horror flick Ginger Snaps and the action epic Underworld, werewolves seemingly died out in the 80s after a successful run of movies like John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London and movies like The Howling. Jack Nicholson became one for Wolf, directed by no less than Closer’s Mike Nichols, and there was a failed sequel An American Werewolf in Paris in late 1997, but otherwise, the movies were constrained to videos and cable.

Horror movies rarely rely on their stars, something made more obvious by the cast of Cursed not being mentioned in the commercials or advertising. The amount of reshoots meant that actors like Omar Epps were edited out, but there are still a few known actors in the remains. Christina Ricci first got attention with her performance as Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family movie and its sequel. Since then, she’s mainly appeared in indie movies like Buffalo 66, The Opposite of Sex and Pumpkin, not being afraid to take on more adult roles and show a bit of flesh. Most recently, she appeared in Woody Allen’s Anything Else, and supported Charlize Theron’s Oscar winning role in Monster, but she has yet to prove herself as any kind of box office draw. Her brother is played by Jesse Eisenberg, best known for his breakout role in Dylan Kidd’s Roger Dodger, but doing very little since then except small roles in Kevin Kline’s Emperor’s Club and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. Ultra-hot Shannon Elizabeth got a lot of male fans after her revealing role in the first American Pie, but her career has not really been very happening since then, although she has horror experience having starred in the forgettable Thirteen Ghosts. Cursed also stars Portia De Rossi, the blond Aussie who has gotten so much attention from her role in the ensemble cast of the Emmy-winning FOX sitcom “Arrested Development,” plus there’s an appearance by pop singer Mya, who was last seen in the romantic comedy Shall We Dance?

Craven’s credibility combined with the potential for him to address a realm of horror that has barely been touched gives a bit of hope for Cursed, but many horror fans may feel that the movie’s PG-13 rating is a cop-out. The Scream movies all did well despite being Rated R, and Craven has already expressed his disappointment with the movie after Dimension reedited the film for a lower rating in hopes of making more money among the teen crowd. As learned by Boogeyman, the rating won’t matter if the premise and marketing don’t sell the movie, but Dimension is taking another play from that film by not screening Cursed for critics, knowing that they probably have a bad movie on their hands.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Exorcist: The Beginning	8/20/04	2,803		$18.05	$6,441	$41.81
An American Werewolf in Paris	12/26/97	1,728		$7.54	$4,363	$26.55
Wolf	6/17/94	2,117		$17.91	$8,460	$65.01
Monster	12/26/03	668	$7.09	$3.37	$5,044	$34.47
Final Destination	3/17/00	2,585		$10.02	$3,876	$53.30
Urban Legend	9/25/98	2,257		$10.52	$4,661	$38.08

Why I Should See It: Werewolves and Wes Craven should go together like peanut butter and jelly.
Why Not: A PG-13 werewolf movie is a bit of a farce because it means the victims will be scratched to death rather than ripped to shreds.

Bottom Line: As exciting as it is to see Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson’s first collaboration in five years, the very name of their movie might be a bad sign of how it may fare at the box office. A strong push by horror fans opening day should give it a strong chance to take the top spot, although chances are that it will not do very well after anyone actually sees it.

Projection: $16 to 18 million opening weekend; less than $45 million total.

DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN (Lions Gate Films)
Starring: Kimberly Elise, Steve Harris, Shemar Moore, Tyler Perry, Tamara Taylor, Lisa Marcos, Tiffany Evans, Cicely Tyson
Directed by: Darren R. Grant (directorial debut)
Genres: Romantic Comedy, Crime Thriller, Urban Comedy
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 1,483
Tagline:
MY REVIEW (Coming Soon!)

Kimberly Elise plays a woman trying to get her life back together after being kicked out of the house by her abusive husband on their 20^th wedding anniversary. She returns home to live with her crazy grandmother Madea, played by creator/writer Tyler Perry, who teaches her how to get revenge.

Playwright Tyler Perry is a bit of a phenomenon. He took up writing as a release to cope with his own traumatic childhood, finding little success after six years until he staged his first play in an Atlanta church and found a new audience. A number of successful gospel-tinged plays followed in which he introduced the character Madea, a rowdy gun-toting grandmother played by Perry in drag, who got into all sorts of trouble. Madea quickly became a favorite among Perry’s mostly African-American audience, becoming the main character in five of Perry’s seven plays including 2000’s “Diary of a Mad Black Woman.” The mix of humor, inspirational messages and gospel teachings in Perry’s work have made his plays hugely successful, selling out long runs at New York’s Beacon Theatre and the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles. To date, his productions have grossed over $75 million at the box office making him one of those rare playwrights who have found success off-Broadway, and that was enough for producers to finally put up the money to turn “Diary” into a feature film.

Diary of a Mad Black Woman isn’t Perry’s first brush with the big screen, even if one doesn’t count the Madea productions filmed for video release, since he was also involved with adapting Bishop T.D. Jakes’ book “Woman, Thou Art Loosed” for the stage. That was adapted to the big screen thanks to producer Reuben Cannon, who has been involved as a casting agent for many Afrocentric films like The Color Purple, Deliver Us from Eva and The Brothers.

Cannon and Perry brought that movie’s star, Kimberly Elise, back for their second collaboration, probably a wise choice since Elise has been building a lot of credibility among urban women from her previous film, and from her breakout role in the 1998 Oprah produced book club adaptation Beloved, directed by Jonathan Demme. Demme was also impressed enough with Elise to give her a key role in his remake of The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington last year, and then she appeared in Woman Thou Art Loosed, which had an impressive opening weekend, earning over $2 million in just 400 theatres, before quickly fading away after that.

Oddly, Kimberly Elise isn’t even mentioned in the commercials for Diary even though the movie is about her character’s path to discovery. Instead, the focus is being put solely on Tyler Perry’s character Madea and the movie’s humor, which shouldn’t be a surprise as the character has been such a huge part of his stage shows. His fans may be excited to finally see this character brought to the big screen, but Perry ups the ante by playing two other characters and even having a couple scenes where the three interact with each other, much like in Eddie Murphy’s The Nutty Professor. Movies about guys in drag have had mixed success at the box office, as seen by films like Juwanna Man, but the success of the Wayans’ Brothers as White Chicks shows that there’s still a niche market who get a kick out of a woman wearing a dress.

The cast is rounded out by Steve Harris from “The Practice” as Elise’s abusive husband, and debonaire Shemare Moore, a former soap opera star who had a lengthy run as the host of the popular music show “Soul Train,” as a philosophizing moving man. (Moore also appeared in the minor urban hit The Brothers.)

As much as you might think Perry’s stage success would translate well to the box office, Diary of a Mad Black Woman’s audience may be a bit limited, mainly catering to fans of Perry’s work and almost exclusively to women. In the ‘90s, African-American women created their own “chick flick” niche by flocking to movies about black women being empowered to get out of bad situations. This helped films like Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back have impressive opening weekends despite moderate releases like this movie is getting. This one seems like it may try to be the Bridget Jones’ Diary for the urban audience, although the quality of the movie doesn’t even come close.

Another major problem is that Diary’s distributor, Vancouver-based Lions Gate Films, has not had very much success with films geared towards urban audiences as seen by how poorly Queen Latifah’s The Cookout fared last summer. The failure of that movie and Soul Train before it, proves that African-American audiences are getting more discerning about the quality of their entertainment, something that might be a bad harbinger for Diary’s success this weekend. At least, Diary of a Mad Black Woman is getting the Oprah seal of approval, and the movie will be featured on an upcoming show.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Woman, Thou Art Loosed	10/1/04	408		$2.32	$5,700	$6.87
The Manchurian Candidate	7/30/04	2,867		$20.02	$6,982	$64.82
Beloved	10/16/98	1,501		$8.17	$5,443	$22.84
Deliver Us From Eva	2/7/03	1,139		$6.65	$5,837	$17.57
Kingdom Come	4/13/01	1,111	$2.45	$7.56	$6,806	$23.25
The Brothers	3/23/01	1,378		$10.30	$7,477	$27.46
How Stella Got Her Groove Back	8/14/98	1,395		$11.32	$8,115	$37.65
Waiting to Exhale	12/22/95	1,253		$14.13	$11,277	$67.01
The Cookout	9/3/04	1,303		$6.22	$4,773	$11.45
White Chicks	6/25/04	2,726	$7.50	$19.68	$7,218	$69.15
Juwanna Mann	6/21/02	1,325		$5.47	$4,128	$13.57

Why I Should See It: Tyler Perry’s work has been very popular on stage, and it will be interesting to see how this “woman power” movie makes the transition to the big screen.
Why Not: There’s nothing very empowering about sitting through a bad movie, of which this is certainly one, Tyler Perry wearing a dress is JUST. PLAIN. WRONG.

Bottom Line: If all the fans of Tyler Perry’s plays comes out to see Diary of a Mad Black Woman its opening weekend, there could be a surprise hit much like Woman, Thou Art Loosed was last October, although it will likely be opening weekend with little chance of legs.

Projection: $7 to 8 million opening weekend but less than $20 million total.

MAN OF THE HOUSE (Sony Pictures)
Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Anne Archer, Brian Van Holt, Christina Milian, Paula Garces, Monica Keena, R. Lee Ermey, Cedric the Entertainer, Paget Brewster, Shea Whigham, Shannon Marie Woodward, Kelli Garner, Vanessa Ferlito
Directed by: Stephen Herek (Rock Star, Holy Man, Mr. Holland’s Opus, The Mighty Ducks, Life or Something Like It, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure)
Genres: Comedy
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 2,422
Tagline: “Protecting witnesses is a challenge. Living with them is impossible.”

Tommy Lee Jones plays Roland Sharp, a Texas Ranger who goes undercover as a coach to protect five University of Texas cheerleaders who were the only witnesses to a crime, but can the crusty law enforcer live in a house with five teen girls?

Every winter, studios roll out their high concept comedies, hoping that they’ll be interesting enough to bring people into theatres during the normally slow movie season. Very often, this leads to some big bombs like Cuba Gooding’s Boat Trip, Meg Ryan in Against the Ropes, and others. So far, 2005 has been slightly devoid of these bad comedies, as the market has favored horror films and thrillers. One rare exception was Ice Cube’s Are We There Yet? which bucked the odds and did far better than that sort of comedy should have.

Man of the House is a comedy vehicle for actor Tommy Lee Jones as he treads familiar ground by once again playing a law enforcement official, a role that has always been perfect for his deadpan Southern delivery. His first memorable appearance in this role was when he played federal agent Sam Gerard in the 1993 film adaptation of The Fugitive, for which Jones received an Oscar. (He was nominated a few years earlier for JFK.) He reprised the role of Gerard for the pseudo-sequel U.S. Marshals, but that didn’t do nearly as well. After those two action-dramas, Jones used his dry humor to great effect while playing a different kind of government agent in Men In Black, which teamed him with box office superstar Will Smith, and both that and its sequel did very good business. Since then, Jones hasn’t really proven himself to be very much a draw on his own, as his next two thrillers The Hunted (again playing an agent) and The Missing, a Western for Ron Howard, both did mediocre business.

For Man in the House, Jones has solid back-up from popular comic star Cedric the Entertainer who plays a street-smart preacher. It’s a bit strange that Cedric’s appearance in the movie does not warrant him to get co-billing, instead being a “featured role.” It makes me think that his role in the film is going to be very small, much like Mike Myers’ part in Gwyneth Paltrow’s flight attendant comedy View from the Top. Most of the commercials feature one scene where Cedric is showing his dance moves, and considering how popular he has become, it makes sense that he would get more of the focus than Jones. After doing stand-up for many years, Cedric broke into film and television where he started getting a lot more attention. His popularity, especially among the African-American community, escalated after his appearance in Barbershop in 2002, and last year, he had two hits with the Barbershop sequel and the family comedy Johnson Family Vacation. Still, it’s hard to think his appearance in this movie will be much bigger than earlier roles in Matthew Perry’s Serving Sara or the Coen Brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty, neither which did well.

The only recognizable cheerleader is New Jersey native Christina Milian, who had a key role in 2003’s Love Don’t Cost A Thing and a smaller appearance in last year’s Torque. Acting is only part of Milian’s bag of tricks as she has found more success as a songwriter and Def Jam recording artist with a string of hits in 2001 including Jennifer Lopez’s hit song “Play,” which Milian wrote. She probably has more fans thanks to her musical career, something that will bring some of them to see her combine that with acting in next week’s crime comedy sequel Be Cool, which also stars Cedric.

Tommy Lee and Cedric
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Hunted	3/14/03	2,516		$13.48	$5,359	$34.23
Men in Black II	7/5/02	3,557	$35.09	$52.15	$14,661	$192.40
Men In Black	7/4/97	3,020	$33.06	$51.07	$16,911	$250.15
U.S. Marshals	3/6/98	2,817		$16.86	$5,985	$57.83
The Fugitive	8/6/93	2,340		$23.76	$10,154	$183.88
Johnson Family Vacation	4/9/04	1,317	$2.44	$9.38	$7,119	$31.18
Barbershop 2: Back in Business	2/6/04	2,711		$24.24	$8,942	$64.96
Barbershop	9/13/02	1,605		$20.63	$12,852	$75.07
Serving Sara	8/23/02	2,154		$5.76	$2,673	$16.81

Obviously, the big selling point for this movie will be Jones and Cedric, but the movie looks like a mixed bag of elements trying to interest different demographics, but ending up with something that may not appeal to any of them. The cheerleading aspect of the story is probably the most prominent one, so the movie could target the same teen female audience that flocked to movies like Bring It On and Coyote Ugly. That said, young girls wouldn’t have much interest in seeing a Tommy Lee Jones movie, and the last cheerleading comedy Sugar and Spice, bombed. Jones’ older audience probably won’t want to watch a cheerleader movie, and older women might find the whole thing rather dubious. Essentially, that just leaves the skeevy male audience who might see the movie just to ogle the sexy actresses in cheerleading outfits, but even they’ll have plenty of other choices.

While Man of the House could be a fun little comedy which treads similar ground as Sandra Bullock’s hit Miss Congeniality, its lack of a focused target audience won’t be helped by its low-key release in a week that hasn’t historically been very good for comedies. It hasn’t gotten nearly the type of push that Sony gave to Hitch earlier this month or even Ice Cube’s Are We There Yet? a few weeks before that. They didn’t even bother to hold a press junket for the movie to help get the word out. They’ve been buying tons of commercial time to try to make up for lost ground, and the success of their last two comedies proves that their marketing seems to be working. Then again, they aren’t even going to bother showing the movie to critics, so every good run has to come to an end, and this movie may be unsalvageable.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Against the Ropes	2/20/04	1,601	$3.04	$1,898	$5.88
A View From the Top	3/21/03	2,508	$7.01	$2,795	$15.61
Sugar and Spice	1/26/01	2,150	$6.03	$2,802	$13.28
Head Over Heels	2/2/01	2,338	$4.80	$2,055	$10.40
Miss Congeniality	12/22/00	2,668	$10.05	$3,667	$106.81
Bring it On	8/25/00	2,380	$17.36	$7,294	$68.25

Why I Should See It: Tommy Lee Jones’ dry cynical humor mixed with Cedric’s physical humor makes for a promising comedy duo. Hot young actresses in cheerleader outfits could never hurt.
Why Not: Too many ideas might make this one high concept that should have been kept to oneself.

Bottom Line: With the only real comedy competition coming from Will Smith’s Hitch, there is room for Tommy Lee Jones’ latest comedy to find itself a bit of business. That said, its low-key release and campaign may mean that few people will even know about the movie, while others may wait until next week to get their comedy fix.

Projection: $7 to 9 million opening weekend and less than $20 million total.

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.

Opening in New York and Los Angeles:
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE STREET (Strand Releasing)
UP AND DOWN (Sony Pictures Classics)

WARRIOR'S PICK: Fernanda Montenegro, star of Walter Salles’ Central Station, is reunited with that film’s screenwriter Marcos Bernstein, for his directorial debut The Other Side of the Street. She plays an elderly Copacabana woman, working as an informer for the police, who thinks she sees a murder across the street. When she decides to investigate it on her own, she ends up getting romantically involved with the suspect.

Mini-Review: While some may be turned off by the October romance at the center of this slow but effective thriller, the Brazilian setting and the strong performance by Montenegro makes it much more than simply another Rear Window pastiche. Rating: 8 out of 10

The Czech Republic’s submission for the Oscars is Jan Hrebejk’s Up and Down, a collection of stories about unrelated people brought together when an immigrant baby goes missing. The main stories involve a soccer hooligan and his wife who buy the baby and a man who returns home from Australia for a dinner with his separated parents.

Mini-Review: This character drama about people brought together by circumstance is as contrived as its annoying overuse of muted Cinescope colors, except that this one involves unlikable and some downright racist characters, none of them played by particularly good actors. Rating: 4 out of 10

Opening in New York:
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE (Winner Communications)

Philip F. Messina’s comedy With Friends Like These is about a group of poker-playing friends, all Hollywood character actors, whose friendship is put to the test when one of them gets the chance to play a lead in the next Martin Scorsese film. Starring Alan Arkin, Robert Costanzo, Beverly D’Angelo and Laura San Giacomo, it opens at New York’s Village East on Friday.

THIS TIME LAST YEAR

The big story over “Leap Day Weekend” was Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, a controversial film about the torture and crucifixion of Jesus Christ that created a stir both among the Catholic dieses as well as the Jewish community when rumors abounded that the movie may be anti-Semitic. Still Christians and Catholics came out in force to support the stirring drama, buying out entire screenings weeks in advance. It opened on Wednesday in over 3,000 theatres—a record for its tiny indie distributor Newmarket Films—and averaged over $7,000 per theatre to make $23.5 million its opening day, the third highest Wednesday opening ever. But that didn’t slow it down for the weekend, as it maintained its business right through Sunday, making just under $84 million in the three days bringing its first week gross to $125 million. This also made it the third highest five-day opening (at the time), as it began a run at the box office that would make it one of 2004’s highest grossing films. It also overshadowed the rest of the weekend movies, none of them did very much business. Of the new movies, the one that fared best was the Samuel Jackson-Ashley Judd thriller Twisted, which still made less than $9 million in a few hundred fewer theatres than Passion, and then the long-awaited (?) sequel Dirty Dancing: Havana Night opened two slots down in fifth with less than $6 million. The Broken Lizard comedy troupe, who had previous success with Super Troopers, didn’t do as well with their follow-up, the horror-comedy Broken Lizard’s Club Dread starring Bill Paxton; it made only $3 million, just barely getting into the Top 10.

Next week, John Travolta tries to BE COOL by joining the music business, Vin Diesel acts as THE PACIFIER for a group of kids, and Adrien Brody tries on THE JACKET.

Copyright 2005 Edward Douglas

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	1	Hitch	$18.5	-41%	3,571	$5,181	3
2	New	Cursed	$16.8	N/A	2,805	$5,989	1
3	2	Constantine	$15.2	-49%	3,020	$5,033	2
4	New	Diary of a Mad Black Woman	$7.8	N/A	1,483	$5,260	1
5	New	Man of the House	$7.5	N/A	2,422	$3,097	1
6	3	Because of Winn-Dixie	$6.0	-41%	3,188	$1,882	2
7	5	Million Dollar Baby	$5.5	-19%	2,150	$2,558	11
8	6	Are We There Yet?	$3.9	-40%	2,242	$1,740	6
9	4	Son of the Mask	$3.7	-50%	2,966	$1,247	2
10	8	The Aviator	$3.0	-27%	1,579	$1,900	3
			Est. Weekend Total $87.90	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -38%		Est. Average PTA $3,392