Coming Soon! - The Weekend Warrior

Preview and Projections for the Weekend of June 24, 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 and reviews.

WEEKEND PROJECTIONS - Final Update 6.23.05

It's nostalgia week at the box office, but at this point, not even a bunch of remakes and returns might save a movie market that has been hurting. Even so, the three new movies will act as a buffer in between summer blockbusters, as Nicole Kidman once again plays a witch, joining Will Ferrell in Nora (Sleepless in Seattle) Ephron’s romantic comedy remake of the 60’s television show Bewitched; Lindsay Lohan continues her series of Disney updates with Herbie: Fully Loaded, opening early on Wednesday; and George A. Romero returns to his field of expertise, zombies, with Land of the Dead. With the three largest built-in fanbases—fans of Kidman, fans of Ferrell and fans of the original show—Bewitched shouldn’t have a problem faring best out of the three new movies, but the G-rating for the first Herbie movie in 25 years might convince parents to bring their small children to see Lohan’s first movie in over a year. Sadly, Romero’s return to zombie world probably won’t get as much attention as Universal’s remake of his Dawn of the Dead, and it will probably get lost in the shuffle as only diehard horror fans will even know about it. Either way, the strong word-of-mouth for Batman Begins should keep it sitting pretty at the top for a second weekend despite its rather disappointing opening, and the box office will continue to be down from where it was the same weekend last year.

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	1	Batman Begins	$28.8	-41%	3,858	$7,465	2
2	New	Bewitched	$23.3	N/A	3,174	$7,341	1
3	2	Mr. and Mrs. Smith	$15.3	-42%	3,265	$4,686	3
4	New	Herbie: Fully Loaded	$14.5*	N/A	3,521*	$4,118	1
5	New	Land of the Dead	$8.8	N/A	2,249	$3,913	1
6	3	Madagascar	$7.0	-35%	2,948	$2,374	5
7	4	Star Wars Episode III	$5.7	-43%	2,371	$2,404	6
8	5	The Longest Yard	$4.9	-40%	2,516	$1,908	5
9	6	The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl	$3.8	-43%	2,352	$1,617	3
10	8	The Perfect Man	$3.1	-42%	2,090	$1,483	2
			Est. Weekend Total $115.10	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -41%		Est. Average PTA $3,731

*Herbie: Fully Loaded made $2.7 million its opening day,which was right on track with my early week prediction of $13.6 million, but Disney also upped the theatre count for the weekend, so the weekend prediction has been raised accordingly.

BEWITCHED (Columbia Pictures)
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Shirley MacLaine, Michael Caine, Kristin Chenoweth, Jason Schwartzman, Joan Plowright, Jim Turner, Heather Burns, Stephen Colbert, David Alan Grier, Steve Carell
Directed by: Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail, Lucky Numbers)
Genres: Comedy, Romance, Remake, Fantasy
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 3,174
Tagline: “Be warned. Be ready.” (Wow, this almost sounds like it should be the tagline for Land of the Dead!)
Mini-Review: Although this is certainly an original way to revive the premise of a popular sitcom, Kidman trying to act cute and Ferrell hamming it up quickly grows stale in this mostly stupid romantic comedy that often forgets that it's supposed to be a remake. (It seems like there's almost twenty minutes where the magic is completely forgotten about.) Even a third act appearance by Steve Carrell doesn't do much to keep this movie from falling flat on its face. Rating: 4 out of 10.

Actor Jack Wyatt (Will Ferrell) is not happy about getting a job playing Darren on a remake of the ‘60s show “Bewitched” until he meets Isabel Bigelow (Nicole Kidman), his beautiful co-star who will be playing the role of his witch wife, Samantha. Except that Isabel really is a witch and she’s not happy about playing second fiddle to Wyatt.

The Year of the Remake rolls on with yet another attempt to reinvent an old television show. In this case, it’s the popular ABC sitcom starring Elizabeth Montgomery as the domesticated witch Samantha, which ran from 1964 to 1972. Created by Sol Saks, the show was very popular, winning a bunch of Emmys for its cast and spawning a less successful spin-off. Like other recent television remakes, it’s getting a very different big screen treatment at the hands of filmmaker Nora Ephron, the queen of the chick flick responsible for two popular romantic comedies starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail. Instead of just making a movie about Darren, Samantha and her crazy Wiccan family, Ephron set the movie in the real world where “Bewitched” was a television show, and then created a romance between the two stars of a new version of said show.

Both Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell may have something to prove with Bewitched, not only because it’s their first movie for Sony. For Kidman, a dramatic actress who has been nominated for three Academy Awards, it’s that the success of last year’s comedy remake The Stepford Wives wasn’t a fluke, and Will Ferrell will want to prove that he can pull off a romantic lead across from a stronger actress in a major film. Besides being her second comedic remake, this will be Kidman’s second time playing a witch, having starred opposite Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic in 1998. She’s obviously trying to do something a little less serious and more high profile than the little-seen indie dramas she’s been doing, like Lars Von Trier’s Dogville and last year’s Birth. She may also want to try to break away from the perceptions of her created by movies like The Hours, for which she won an Oscar, and Cold Mountain, for which she wasn’t even nominated. Kidman certainly seems to be able to be more of herself in this type of role, and this might be the perfect time for her to break away from her rather eclectic movie choices and do something more mainstream.

This time, she’s teamed with arguably one of the hottest comic actors in Hollywood. Originally, the role of Jack Wyatt AKA Darren was to be played by Jim Carrey, but just like the original show’s Darren on the show, he was replaced by Will Ferrell, who apparently, is trying to appear in more movies than Samuel L. Jackson this year. (Good luck!) He appeared in Woody Allen’s romantic comedy Melinda and Melinda earlier this year, followed by the family soccer comedy Kicking and Screaming, which didn’t do that great at the box office compared to his previous comedies, Anchorman and Elf. Still, Bewitched plays up to both of their strengths, and the mid-summer release could help it get more business than it might during another season.

Kidman and Ferrell
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
The Stepford Wives	6/11/04	3,057		$21.41	$7,003	$59.48
Cold Mountain	12/26/03	2,163	$4.51	$14.57	$6,738	$95.97
The Hours	1/17/03	402	$3.78	$4.64	$11,555	$41.60
Moulin Rouge	6/1/01	2,279	$0.68	$13.72	$6,019	$57.22
Practical Magic	10/16/98	2,652		$13.10	$4,940	$46.81
To Die For	10/6/95	928	$0.70	$6.23	$6,713	$21.10
Kicking and Screaming	5/13/05	3,455		$20.16	$5,835	$49.62
Melinda and Melinda	3/18/05	197		$0.56	$2,836	$3.82
Anchorman	7/9/04	3,091		$28.42	$9,193	$84.14
Elf	11/7/03	3,337		$31.11	$9,324	$172.70

As impressive as it may be to get Ferrell and Kidman to co-star in a romantic comedy, the biggest surprise might be seeing Oscar winning actor Michael Caine as Isabel’s father, since he’s not an actor known for doing just anything. After making a successful return last week playing Alfred in Batman Begins, playing Isabel’s skirt-chasing father should solidify Caine’s popularity among mainstream audiences. Singer, actress and afterlife enthusiast Shirley MacLaine was brought on to fill the shoes of the Emmy winning Agnes Moorehead, who played Samantha’s mother Endora on the original show. She does a surprisingly good job, but like everything else about the movie, it’s a different spin on the character. What would any Will Ferrell movie be without an appearance from Steve Carrell, who may once again steal the show like he did in Bruce Almighty and Anchorman, by channeling “center square” Paul Lynde for his role as Uncle Arthur.

Television shows being made into movies are nothing new, but in the last few years, action and drama shows have had better success, even when turned into comedies like last year’s Starsky & Hutch with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. In the early ‘90s, Hollywood went crazy wit television remakes after the success of The Addams Family, based on the creepy family sitcom. As often happens, audiences quickly grew tired of the number of remakes, and by the time remakes of McHale’s Navy and Leave It to Beaver hit theatres, they’d had enough. Although the African-American reinvention of The Honeymooners bombed a few weeks ago, this remake seems like it’s enough of its own thing to stand on its own, so it won’t necessarily have to meet up to expectations of the show’s fans.

Written by Nora Ephron with her sister Delia, who co-wrote the recent adaptation of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, the movie is going to automatically have more appeal to women than men. Even though the thought of Samantha giving up magic for her man is somewhat sexist—this was the ‘60s after all—the original show probably had more appeal to women than men, and the Ephron sisters have enough pull with women that their modern romantic comedy should appeal to fans of the show, even though it is a very different take. That said, it’s hard to believe that Ferrell and Kidman could be quite as convincing as a couple as Hanks and Ryan, and Ferrell’s humor tends to appeal more to guys, who won’t be so interested in this.

Beyond being a remake of a popular television show, the witch factor of Bewitched could be somewhat appealing to mass audiences. In June 1987, Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer starred in the adaptation of John Updike’s novel The Witches of Eastwick, which was quite successful. Six years later, Kidman’s Stepford co-star Bette Midler played a witch in the movie Hocus Pocus, which didn’t fare as well.

Of course, Sony have become the masters of marketing, and they’ll figure out how to sell this mixed bag to its potential audience. Of course, the first season of the original television is released this week , including a free ticket to see the movie, but also having a trailer on the bestselling Hitch DVD won’t hurt either. Still, without as much advance buzz nor the guys or kids that made Ferrell’s previous films such big hits, it’s likely to do decently, but not well enough to make much of a mark on a stagnating box office.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
You've Got Mail	12/18/98	2,691	$18.43	$6,849	$115.73
Sleepless in Seattle	6/26/93	1,579	$17.25	$10,925	$126.68
Leave it to Beaver	8/22/97	1,880	$3.25	$1,729	$10.79
McHale's Navy	4/18/97	1,859	$2.13	$1,146	$4.38
The Brady Bunch Movie	2/17/95	1,822	$14.83	$8,139	$46.55
The Beverly Hillbillies	10/15/93	2,152	$9.53	$4,428	$41.95
The Addams Family	11/22/91	2,411	$24.20	$10,037	$113.50
Hocus Pocus	7/16/93	1,430	$8.13	$5,685	$39.36
The Witches	8/24/90	879	$2.22	$2,526	$10.36
The Witches of Eastwick	6/12/87	1,103	$9.45	$8,571	$63.77

Why I Should See It: Because Nicole Kidman makes a rather cute Samantha, and because Will Ferrell will be bringing his usual madcap comedy.
Why Not: The television remakes have already gotten out of hand. If it continues, what’s next? Sanford and Son? Green Acres? Laverne and Shirley: The Movie? The Dukes of Hazzard!?!

Bottom Line: Audiences may already be getting sick of all the remakes this summer, but the combination of two popular stars in a romantic comedy directed by the queen of the genre should allow many women and young girls to give this version of a popular show a chance this weekend. It could lose some of the teens girls to Herbie: Fully Loaded, but it should still be the more appealing of the two movies.

Projection: $22 to 25 million opening weekend on its way to $65 million.

GEORGE A. ROMERO’S LAND OF THE DEAD (Universal Pictures)
Starring: Simon Baker, John Leguizamo, Dennis Hopper, Asia Argento, Robert Joy
Directed by: George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead)
Genres: Horror, Zombie
Rated R
Theatre Count: 2,249
Tagline: “The legendary filmmaker brings you his ultimate zombie masterpiece.”

After 15 years, master horror director George A. Romero returns to the world of zombies, quite literally, as the globe has been overrun by the walking dead. Inside a walled city, a group of survivors try to keep out thousands of zombies who have evolved to the point where they’re smarter and far more deadly.

You may want to sit down for the next fact. It’s been over 35 years since George Romero took the subject of voodoo mythology to horrifying heights, as the dead mysteriously came back to life, hungry for human flesh in 1968’s Night of the Living Dead. Although the movie was mostly ignored, it became a bonafide horror cult classic during the ‘70s, allowing the 1978 sequel Dawn of the Dead to be an even bigger hit in theatres. Years later, Romero completed his zombie “trilogy” with the less successful 1985 movie Day of the Dead, before penning a new version of Night of the Living Dead to be directed by his long-time effects collaborator Tom Savini in 1990. Romero’s zombie movies were so popular that the producer/director was hailed in the ‘80s as one of the masters of horror along with Wes Craven and John Carpenter, even as he attempted other ventures like the 1982 film Creepshow and the television show “Tales from the Darkside”, both of which were influenced by the ‘50’s EC horror comics. His last mainstream work was adapting the horror novels Monkey Shines and Stephen King’s The Dark Half, before pretty much disappearing for a number of years. (Romero’s scariest venture might have been his eerily foreboding documentary titled O. J. Simpson: Juice on the Loose.)

Romero’s return to horror after so many years will certainly be of interest to older horror fans, but it’s doubtful that many under the age or 20 will know who he is or why he’s so important. Of course, they’ll be aware of Romero’s influence, most notably on the video game market, which has kept the zombie craze alive, and brought it back to the screen with movies like Resident Evil and the less popular House of the Dead. (Incidentally, the Return of the Living Dead series of comic horror films have nothing to do with Romero.) Although few of his movies were huge theatrical hits, his work has had a significant impact on the box office both here and abroad, as Dawn influenced two of the U.K’s biggest film hits, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and then the comedic take on zombies, Shaun of the Dead. Last year, a reverential remake of Dawn of the Dead by Zak Snyder was a huge hit among younger horror fans, who flocked to see it opening weekend, and paving the way for Romero’s return.

Romero’s movies have rarely been about big name stars, but his latest zombie masterpiece has quite a diverse cast. First and foremost, it’s the return to the big screen of Dennis Hopper, who has remained active in low-key direct-to-video movies, but hasn’t been in a major studio release since 2002’s Knockaround Guys. Hopper’s best known for his crazy roles in movies like Easy Rider, Blue Velvet and The River’s Edge, and it’s surprising that it’s taken this long for him to work with Romero.

Simon Baker, the film’s main hero, won’t be known to many moviegoers--he had a small part in The Ring 2--but true horror fans will be familiar with Asia Argento, daughter of legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento, who produced Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Asia has made a number of her own films in recent years, but her first major U.S. movie was playing opposite Vin Diesel in XXX. Another candidate for Busiest Man of 2005, along with Will Ferrell and Samuel Jackson, is John Leguizamo, who has appeared in two remakes this year: John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and the recent flop, The Honeymooners. Of course, horror effects-master Tom Savini continues his lifelong alliance with Romero, by playing a similar role in Land of the Dead as he did in Dawn.

Not having big stars didn’t hurt the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake nor did it hurt Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, which opened almost exactly two years ago, but both movies had stronger marketing campaigns. By comparison, Universal Studios seems to just be throwing this one out into theatres without much fanfare, so one has to guess that this Romero zombie flick was part of some sort of deal in conjunction with last year’s Dawn of the Dead remake. Without the advantages of a successful video game franchise like Resident Evil and its sequel or the buzz of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, it’s doubtful that anyone but Fangoria readers will even know that this movie is coming out. Commercials for the movie are almost non-existent, and of course, some dopes will just assume that this is a sequel to Uwe Boll’s godawful House of the Dead. (It’s not!)

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Night of the Living Dead	10/19/90	1,544	$2.88	$1,865	$5.66
Day of the Dead	7/19/85	168	$1.70	$10,119	$5.00
Resident Evil: Apocalypse	9/10/04	3,284	$23.04	$7,015	$50.74
Resident Evil	3/15/02	2,528	$17.71	$7,004	$39.53
Shaun of the Dead	9/24/04	607	$3.33	$5,487	$13.46
Dawn of the Dead	3/19/04	2,745	$26.72	$9,735	$58.89
House of the Dead	10/10/03	1,520	$5.68	$3,734	$10.20
28 Days Later	6/27/03	1,260	$10.06	$7,985	$45.06
Return of the Living Dead	8/16/85	1,506	$4.40	$2,921	$14.24
Assault on Precinct 13	1/19/05	2,297	$6.50	$2,831	$19.98

Why I Should See It: Zombies are cool and Romero’s zombies were always the coolest!
Why Not: Romero hasn’t been making movies for a number of years, and this seems like an obvious attempt to cash-in by Universal on the success of the Dawn of the Dead remake.

Bottom Line: Older horror fans will be thrilled that George Romero is returning to a genre that has spawned so many copycats in the last few years. Unfortunately, Land of the Dead is only being released to capitalize on the latest craze or as part of some deal between Romero and Universal, and it hasn’t been promoted to the point where anyone but Romero fans will know anything about it. Neither Wes Craven nor John Carpenter have sustained their popularity with younger horror fans, and it’s doubtful that Romero will fare much better. It’s a shame that Romero waited until the zombie craze was on its last legs before returning. (Update: Well, a bunch of zombie fans gave me a rude awakening--and I do mean rude--and with an increased theatre count and placement on the Moviefone Top 5 and on the Yahoo Buzz page, there may be more interest and/or awareness in this movie than I first presumed.)

Projection: $8 to 10 million on its way to around $25 million.

HERBIE: FULLY LOADED (Walt Disney Pictures)
Starring: Lindsay Lohan, Michael Keaton, Matt Dillon, Breckin Meyer, Justin Long, Cheryl Hines, Jill Ritchie
Directed by: Angela Robinson (D.E.B.S.)
Genres: Family, Comedy, Adventure, Remake
Rated G
Theatre Count: 3,301
Tagline: “He’s back!” (I wonder how much they paid the person who wrote that one?)
Mini-Review: While Lindsay Lohan does her usual thing--basically looking good and screaming in a high pitched voice--this is a cute, fun and perfectly harmless family film that retains the feel of what made Herbie so lovable in the original movies. It's great to know that Disney is making the effort to find the car a new audience of young fans, and Angela Robinson does a great job keeping this film entertaining. Rating: 7 out of 10

Herbie, the Volkswagen that thinks like a man, is back, now being driven by Maggie Peyton (Lindsay Lohan), a young woman who hopes to become a NASCAR champion. (Watch out, Danika Patrick!) The only thing standing in her way is the current champion, Trip Murphy (Matt Dillon), who will do anything to stop them.

Another remake deserves another history lesson. In 1968, a year before George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead redefined horror, another visionary named Walt Disney presented The Love Bug, a movie about a Volkswagen Beetle named Herbie, who had all the personality of a human. The lovable #53 became an instant hit among families and kids—myself included—paving the way for three more sequels between 1974 and 1980, as well as a short-lived television show. In 1997, Disney brought Herbie out of the mothballs for a TV movie starring Bruce Campbell and directed by Peyton Reed (Bring It On), and after the success of their 2003 remake of Freaky Friday, Disney decided to give Herbie another chance on the big screen, teaming him with the studio’s most reliable star Lindsay Lohan, for a sequel that brings Herbie into the 21st Century.

Before Freaky Friday, Lindsay Lohan was an unknown even after starring in Disney’s remake of The Parent Trap seven years earlier, but the success of pairing her with Jamie Lee Curtis proved to be a genius move that found Lohan millions of female teenage fans. Lohan’s next Disney film Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen didn’t do as well the following spring, but a few months later, she diverged from Disney for the Tina Fey penned Mean Girls, another big hit which helped redefine Lohan’s career, while getting her some older fans. In the year since then, Lohan has been everywhere, releasing her first record and becoming a sweetheart of the tabloid and the paparazzi with stories of her diminishing weight and her crazy alcoholic father. There’s little question that Lohan is a hotter star now then she was back when she starred in Freaky Friday, but the negative press she’s gotten won’t help a Disney movie the same way it did Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Lohan has an odd and varied supporting cast for Herbie, ranging from Michael Keaton, star of dozens of movies over the last twenty years including the recent horror hit White Noise, as her father, to Matt Dillon, who starred in There’s Something About Mary and the recent drama Crash, as her rival. They’re joined by Justin Long, the young star of Jeepers Creepers and Dodgeball, who plays Maggie's love interest, and Cheryl Hines, best known as Larry David’s wife on his HBO improvised sitcom “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” None of them bring much to the movie as far as star power.

Director Angela Robinson’s first movie D.E.B.S., about lesbian secret agents, opened in select cities this past March, but it quickly disappeared from theatres after getting bad reviews. On top of that, Herbie: Fully Loaded is co-written by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon of “The State” and “Reno 911,” who also appear in the movie. Their last vehicular comedy Taxi tanked, but was followed by Disney’s biggest hit of the year The Pacifier starring Vin Diesel. (The Herbie screenplay also has some work by Alfred Gough and Miles Miller, the team who wrote both Shanghai Noon and its sequel Shanghai Knights.) If nothing else, these four should guarantee some funny gags that adults might appreciate, but it doesn’t bode well that reviews will be anything but scathing.

Considering that it's been over twenty years since the last installment to this sequel, you have to wonder whether the premise of a car with personality is something that will be of interest to the jaded kids of today. Most of them will never have heard of Herbie, and heck, a lot of kids will never have even seen a Volkswagen Bug, because they’re not as prevalent as they were back at the height of Herbie’s popularity. The lovable dog Benji, who was also popular among family audiences in the '70s, failed to make a return with Benji: Off the Leash, so in that sense the other two new movies should do better with nostalgia lovers. On the other hand, NASCAR is very popular right now in many regions, and the thought of a young woman driving won’t be as foreign to those who have become obsessed with the success of Danika Patrick at this year’s Indy 500. (Patrick has even gotten involved in the promotion of Herbie.)

Herbie: Fully Loaded is a bit of a rarity since its Disney’s first G-rated movie in some time. G-rated films used to be the studio’s bread and butter, but in recent years, family films tend to get a PG rating, and parents will often bring their youngest kids to see them anyway. The lower rating should help it among more conservative moviegoers who don’t want any violence or bad language in their movies. It certainly may have helped Disney’s girl-friendly Princess Diaries and Princess Diaries 2 bring in a wider audience. The thing is that the movie’s star is not particularly G-rated—anyone else having flashbacks to sex addict Bob Crane in Superdad?--with rumors circulating that her breasts had to be digitally reduced to get that rating, when her outfits proved to be too (bad joke alert!!) titillating. Herbie: Full Loaded did get its G-rating, which should make it a safer alternative for families with younger kids.

Like Freaky Friday, it will open on Wednesday in hopes of getting some of the kids who are out of school and build some word-of-mouth for the weekend when working parents will be able to bring their kids.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Mean Girls	4/30/04	2,839		$24.43	$8,606	$86.05
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen	2/20/04	2,503		$9.35	$3,736	$29.30
Freaky Friday	8/8/03	2,954	$10.90	$22.20	$7,516	$110.22
The Parent Trap	7/31/98	2,247	$5.06	$11.15	$4,962	$66.30
Flubber	11/28/97	2,641		$27.15	$10,280	$92.97
101 Dalmatians	11/29/96	2,794		$33.50	$11,990	$136.19
The Country Bears	7/26/02	2,553		$5.31	$2,080	$16.99
Taxi	10/8/04	3,001	$0.62	$12.03	$4,009	$36.61
The Princess Diaries	8/3/01	2,537		$22.86	$9,011	$108.24
Benji: Off the Leash	8/20/04	877	$0.03	$1.51	$1,724	$3.79

Why I Should See It: It’s Herbie, the lovable VW and even today’s jaded 5-year-old should enjoy his antics!
Why Not: It’s time for Lohan to get away from the Disney umbrella before she turns into Kurt Russell (Sorry, Kurt!)

Bottom Line: While many adults will have fond memories of the loveable VW Herbie, it’s doubtful that nostalgia will be enough to convince them to see the movie without younger kids in tow. This means that Lindsay Lohan’s popularity will really be put to the test, because she’ll have to convince her regular audience of teen and ‘tween girls to see a movie that they may see as being childish and/or stupid. It all comes down to whether younger kids will buy cars that act like humans as easily as they have taken to talking animals. (Update: Reviews aren't great, but it's opening in more theatres than the other new movies, so it should do well based on the Lohan factor.)

Projection: $5 to 6 million on Wednesday and Thursday with another $13 to 15 million over the weekend adding up to a total gross of around $40 million.

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 WARRIOR’S PICKS of the week are Ziad Doueiri’s LILA SAYS (Samuel Goldwyn Films), opening in New York, and the documentary MARCH OF THE PENGUINS (Warner Independent Pictures).

Adapted from the autobiographical novel by Chimo, the Lebanon based erotic drama Lila Says is about the relationship between a 19-year-old boy and the mysterious, ultra-sensual French girl named Lila. It opens in New York. MY REVIEW: Lila Says may very well be the best coming-of-age film of all time, not only due to its unique setting, but also, due to its frank honesty in dealing with teen sexuality. For the film, Zia Doueiri has found two amazingly talented actors in Mohammed Khouas and especially Vahina Giocante, a sexy newcomer who says the most shocking things in a sweet way that can only be found endearing. RATING: 9 out of 10

Narrated by Morgan Freeman, Luc Jacquet’s amazing March of the Penguins takes an in-depth look at the rigorous mating rituals of emperor penguins in the wild. It will get a wide release after opening in New York and Los Angeles on Friday. MY REVIEW

Joan Allen stars in Sally (Orlando) Potter’s new film YES (Sony Pictures Classics), also opening in New York/L.A, as the wife of a politician who has a turbulent affair with a Lebanese cook (Simon Abkarian). Told entirely in rhyming prose, the drama also stars Sam Neill as Allen’s philandering husband, and Shirley Henderson. Mini-Review: An excrutiating and often impenetrable attempt at emulating James Joyce with a lot of pretentious blathering and very little actual plot. Certainly, the performances are commendable, but Potter's camera trickery and repeated breaking of the 4th wall often sours this attempt to sum up American-Arab relationships with such an unbelievable romance. Few movies have angered me with the way they wasted my time, as much as this one did. Rating: 2 out of 10

Opening this week in L.A. is THE LAST MOGUL (THINKFilm) documents the story of Hollywood agent Lew Wasserman, who pioneered the advent of today’s multi-million artist deals, with interviews with some of the biggest power players in Hollywood. Also, legendary fashion photographer David LaChapelle directs the documentary RIZE (Lions Gate Films), about the popular L.A. hip hop dance style called crunking that has dancers contorting their body into all sorts of shapes. It opens in over 350 theatres in select cities.

THIS WEEKEND LAST YEAR

In a year where Mel Gibson’s ultra-right wing drama The Passion of The Christ already had earned over $350 million, it was time for the liberals to have their say, arriving in the form and voice of Michael Moore and his anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. Having lost its distribution by Miramax due to a dispute with its parent company Disney, Harvey and Bob Weinstein bought the project back and distributed the film with the help of indie companies IFC and Lions Gate Films. After earning $150,000 playing for two days in a single theatre each in New York and Los Angeles, Fahrenheit 9/11 expanded into just 868 theatres across the country, and surprise, surprise…it ended up as the #1 movie of the weekend, earning almost $24 million, an average of $27.5k per theatre. By midday Saturday, it had become the highest-grossing documentary ever, edging out Moore’s previous film, Bowling for Columbine.

The movie that opened in second place couldn’t be much more different, as the critically slammed White Chicks had Shawn and Marlon Wayans playing FBI agents in drag; it managed to earn just under $20 million. In turn, the movie couldn’t be any more different from the romantic drama The Notebook, starring Rachel (Mean Girls) McAdams and Ryan (Murder by Numbers) Gosling, which brought in $13.4 million its opening weekend in just 2,303 theatres, enough to place it in fourth place just ahead of Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal. Just barely getting into the Top 10, the animal drama Two Brothers, from the director of The Bear, suffered the same fate as the previous week’s Around the World in 80 Days, making $6 million. Few people realized that later that year, the movie’s young star Freddie Highmore would get critical acclaim playing opposite Johnny Depp in Finding Neverland.

Next week, Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise reteam for their remake of H.G.Wells’ sci-fi classic WAR OF THE WORLDS, while Martin Lawrence goes all Bobby Knight on a bunch of kids in REBOUND.

Copyright 2005 Edward Douglas