Preview and Projections for the Weekend of June 3, 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. (Note: Due to my impending vacation, the final update is early this week and next week’s column will likely be a day or two late.)

WEEKEND PROJECTIONS - final update 6.01

Things settle down a bit as the month of June brings a small respite in between blockbusters. The first weekend of the month has three low-key movies trying to takes some box office bucks away from the blockbusters. Standing the best chance at cracking the top 3 is Cinderella Man, reuniting director Ron Howard with his A Beautiful Mind star Russell Crowe, who appears in his first film in over eighteen months along with Renee Zellweger (Chicago). It should provide suitable counter-programming to the May blockbusters for older movie lovers, who’ll have more confidence in the film’s quality due to its impressive credentials. With no strong box office stars, the other two movies could split up the teen audiences looking for something new. Lords of Dogtown, a ‘70s biodrama about the origins of professional skateboarding, will certainly seem hipper than the teen chick flick The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but that has a guaranteed audience in young teen girls who love Anne Brashare’s books. Opening on Wednesday, The Sisterhood may win out due to the advantage it has in theatres, but the skateboarding crowd may flock to Dogtown in force. While George Lucas’ final Star Wars chapter may hold sway over the box office for a third weekend in a row, expect DreamWorks’ Madagascar to narrow the margin between them, and don’t be surprised if it passes it and steals the top spot, especially with no other true family fare in theatres. (Update: My reviews of Cinderella Man and Lords of Dogtown have been added.)

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	3	Madagascar	$27.5	-42%	4,161	$6,609	2
2	1	Star Wars: Episode III	$26.5	-52%	3,330	$7,958	3
3	New	Cinderella Man	$23.8	N/A	2,811	$8,467	1
4	2	The Longest Yard	$23.0	-52%	3,634	$6,329	2
5	New	The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants	$10.3	N/A	2,583	$3,988	1
6	New	Lords of Dogtown	$8.5	N/A	1,865	$4,558	1
7	4	Monster-in-Law	$6.0	-42%	2,950	$2,069	4
8	6	Crash	$3.5	-24%	1,500	$2,333	5
9	5	Kicking and Screaming	$2.4	-53%	2,450	$980	4
10	7	The Interpreter	$1.1	-47%	900	$1,222	7
			Est. Weekend Total $132.60	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -45%		Est. Average PTA $4,451

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CINDERELLA MAN (Universal Pictures)
Starring: Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Craig Bierko, Bruce McGill, Paddy Considine
Directed by: Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, The Missing, Ransom, edTV)
Genres: Drama, Sports
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 2,811
Tagline: “When America was on its knees, he brought us to our feet.”
Mini-Review: Howard and Crowe prove that they're better together than apart, creating a hard-luck comeback story with heart that is as good a boxing movie as Rocky or Raging Bull. Jim Braddock is easily Crowe's best role since Gladiator and Paul Giamatti proves that Sideways was no fluke. Ring the bell, ref, this year's Oscar fight may already be over! Rating: 10 out of 10

The latest film from director Ron Howard follows the Depression-era boxing career of Jim Braddock (Russell Crowe), who retires after a number of defeats. Because he still has to support his wife (Renée Zellweger) and children, Braddock returns to boxing when he has a chance to fill-in for someone in a high profile match. His unexpected win over the #1 contender begins a series of victories that get the masses behind this true-life underdog.

Cinderella Man answers the question on what you get when you cross A Beautiful Mind, Seabiscuit and Million Dollar Baby. As the second collaboration between director Ron Howard and actor Russell Crowe, it’s already being considered as an early Oscar contender even before anyone has seen it. After all, the last time the two collaborated, they were able to turn a biodrama about a mathematician into a box office hit, which received eight nominations, winning for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and supporting actress Jennifer Connelly. Apparently, they liked working together enough to look for other projects, and for a while, they were going to collaborate on Disney’s The Alamo. When that fell through, they moved onto other projects, with Howard helming The Missing, another Western that didn’t do that much better than the box office bomb that The Alamo would ultimately become.

Surprisingly, Russell Crowe has only appeared in one other movie since A Beautiful Mind. He’s been laying low in recent years, starting a family and trying to make people forget some of his well -publicized dust-ups. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, based on a series of books, opened to rather mediocre reviews in the fall of 2003, but still received a number of Oscar nominations, albeit none for Crowe. Still, few will deny that Crowe is one of this century’s greatest actors, as can be confirmed by his previous Oscar nominations for A Beautiful Mind and Michael Mann’s The Insider. He did win the Oscar for his leading role in Ridley Scott’s high-profile epic The Gladiator. The role of boxer Jim Braddock seems perfectly suited for an actor known for getting into fights at the slightest provocation.

Howard himself won his first Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, and Cinderella Man reunites him not only with his star, but also with its Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who brushed up the original script by Cliff Collingsworth. Howard at the helm almost guarantees that this is a quality film. After a successful career as a child actor on television shows like “The Andy Griffith Show” and “Happy Days”, Howard went on to direct some of Hollywood’s biggest actors like Tom Hanks (Apollo 13) and Mel Gibson (Ransom), both movies becoming big hits. Howard’s next high profile project will reteam him with Tom Hanks for the highly anticipated film version of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which should be one of the biggest movies next summer.

Unlike Master and Commander, which had practically no women in it, Crowe is once again paired with a respectable actress playing his wife. Renee Zellweger has had her own share of Oscar nominations, winning one a few years ago for her supporting role in Anthony Minghella’s Cold Mountain. She’ll still forever be best known for bringing Helen Fields’ literary character Bridget Jones to life in the successful Bridget Jones’ Diary, and the not quite as successful sequel, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (which ironically, is not too far away from “the far side of the world”). Another actor who plays a prominent role in the film is Paul Giamatti, who was robbed of an Oscar nomination for Sideways last year. He plays Jim Braddock’s manager, a role that might normally have been a big break for Ron Howard’s brother Clint, who usually play the bald frumpy guy in his movies. Though Craig Bierko isn’t very well known, his casting as Crowe’s main competition in the ring is ironic considering that, like Crowe, he used to date Meg Ryan.

Originally, the plan was to release the movie last December, the perfect positioning for it to get Oscar nominations, but Crowe suffered a shoulder injury, which forced the production to be delayed a number of months, so Universal had to decide whether to hold it until the end of 2005 and risk facing other Oscar contenders or put it out earlier and risk it being forgotten by awards time.

Cinderella Man has a lot going for it, because underdog stories and boxing movies have been popular with discerning movie lovers going back to Sylvester Stallone’s breakout in the 1976 film Rocky to Clint Eastwood’s recent Oscar sweeping Million Dollar Baby. Older adults should welcome this movie to theatres as counter-programming to the glut of summer blockbusters and popcorn flicks geared more towards a younger audience. The horseracing movie Seabiscuit and Tom Hanks’ crime drama Road to Perdition are both prime examples of quality adult-targeted films opening in the summer movie season to great success. Like both movies, Cinderella Man is set during the early part of the 20^th Century, and its rags to riches underdog story mirrors the plot for Seabiscuit. Cinderella Man has an advantage of opening in almost 800 more theatres, which shows a lot more immediate demand, and if it’s even a quarter as good as most people expect, it should be able to maintain its business over the next few weeks. (Update: It is actually better than most people might think, and the sneak previews in over 700 theatres over Memorial Day weekend will help build word-of-mouth for its opening weekend.)

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World	11/14/03	3,101		$25.11	$8,096	$87.57
A Beautiful Mind	1/4/02	1,853	$21.21	$16.57	$8,940	$170.71
The Missing	11/28/03	2,756	$4.40	$10.84	$3,931	$26.70
Gladiator	5/5/00	2,938		$34.82	$11,852	$186.61
Apollo 13	6/30/95	2,197		$25.35	$11,538	$172.07
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason	11/12/04	530		$8.68	$16,385	$40.20
Cold Mountain	12/26/03	2,163	$4.51	$14.57	$6,738	$78.38
Chicago	2/7/03	1,841	$53.02	$10.79	$5,859	$170.68
Bridget Jones's Diary	4/13/01	1,611		$10.73	$6,662	$71.50
Sideways	10/22/04	144	$2.34	$1.41	$9,825	$71.50
Seabiscuit	7/25/03	1,987		$20.85	$10,495	$120.20
Million Dollar Baby	1/28/05	2,010	$9.31	$12.27	$6,102	$100.28

Why I Should See It: With one of America’s most beloved directors and two Oscar caliber actors working in a genre that has historically produced many Oscar winners and box office hits, Cinderella Man seems like a sure-fire bet!
Why Not: Because Paul Giamatti will probably be robbed of another Oscar nomination for his role in this one, too! Damn you, AMPAS!

Bottom Line: A Beautiful Mind was a huge success on many levels, and the reunion of Howard and Crowe should pique the interest of many a filmgoer, especially those who have waited over a year for Crowe to return. Cinderella Man is what you get if you smoosh together the non-Lord of the Rings Oscar nominated films over the last three or four years. Although this type of movie is usually saved for the fall Oscar Season, Universal is using their early candidate as counter-programming for the summer blockbusters with older moviegoers. Look for it to pull its own Jim Braddock this weekend. (Update: After seeing the movie, I've increased my prediction since the reviews should be strong enough to get a lot more people out opening weekend.)

Projection: $22 to 25 million opening weekend on its way to $100 million.

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LORDS OF DOGTOWN (Sony/TriStar Pictures)
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Victor Rasuk, John Robinson, Michael Angarano, Nikki Reed, Heath Ledger, Rebecca De Mornay, Johnny Knoxville, America Ferrera, Eddie Cahill, Shea Whigham
Directed by: Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen)
Genres: Action, Drama
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 1,865
Tagline: “They came from nothing to change everything.” (Hey, it’s better than the other two choices!)

In the mid-70’s, a group of teen surfers from Venice, California formed a skateboarding team known as the “Z-Boyz”, turning a fad into a sport by introducing a number of wild surfing-influenced moves that had not been seen before. But the fame and fortune that came along with their newfound notoriety eventually leads to friction between the friends.
Mini-Review: While Robinson and Rasuk once again shine in their respective roles, the performances by Hirsch and Ledger are fairly embarassing. The large portions of dramatic license take away from the actual story, which is seen at its worst in the way that Peralta makes his own character seem like a perfect angel compared to the rest of the Z-Boys. The weak script is so full of "Dude"s and "Bro"s that it makes the the innovators of professional skateboarding seem like complete idiots, which is a real shame. Rating: 5 out of 10

Essentially, what we have here is an indie film made to look like a major studio action drama. The project’s genesis came out of Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary by surfer and skateboarding legend Stacy Peralta about the origins of modern skateboarding in Southern California. After his documentary wowed audiences at the Sundance Film Festival, he proceeded to write a biodrama based on that story, which eventually fell into the hands of another Sundance darling Catherine Hardwicke, whose first film Thirteen also got attention there. (Originally, Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst was going to make this his directorial debut, and even director David Fincher was attached at one point.)

Hardwicke gathered a diverse cast for the movie, but the three actors best known to teen audiences will be Heath Ledger, Emile Hirsch and Johnny Knoxville. Ledger, who plays the sleazy surf shop owner who created the Zephyr skateboard team, got his break appearing opposite Mel Gibson in The Patriot. After the success of his own action-adventure A Knight’s Tale, Ledger hit a rough spot as most of his movies that followed--The Four Feathers, The Order and Ned Kelly--bombed. With his star power on the decline, Ledger may have to rely on his younger co-star Emile Hirsch, who plays Jay Adams, the most outrageous and out-of-control of the Zephyrs team. Though Hirsch has received a bit of critical buzz over the years, that hasn’t translated into box office success for whatever reason. After appearing in the Jodie Foster produced indie The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Hirsch co-starred with Kevin Kline in The Emperor’s Club. The Easter 2004 comedy The Girl Next Door was supposed to be Hirsch’s big breakout, but even that didn’t find much of an audience; neither did his recent indies The Mudge Boy and Imaginary Heroes.

The actor with the most credibility among Dogtown’s target young male audience is Johnny Knoxville, a non-pro skateboarder who originated the MTV stunt show “Jackass”, which spawned its own box office hit with Jackass: The Movie. Knoxville followed by co-starring with The Rock in a remake of Walking Tall and by starring in John Waters’ NC-17 rated indie, A Dirty Shame. Oddly, none of the actors are even mentioned in the trailer or commercials, so obviously, any perceived star power they might have will not be enough to sell the movie.

The rest of the cast is made up of some of the finest young actors from the world of independent film. Peralta himself is played by John Robinson (Gus Van Sant’s Elephant), Tony Alva is played by Victor Rasuk (Raising Victor Vargas), and Hardwicke is reunited with the young hottie Nikki Reed, who she discovered for Thirteen. America Ferrara (Real Women Have Curves), who also stars in this week’s The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, has a small part. Few will recognize the returning Rebecca DeMornay, who pulls a Charlize Theron by playing the rather unglamorous and almost ugly mother of Jay Adams.

With the look and feel of hip 70’s biodramas like Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous and P. T. Anderson’s Boogie Nights, the movie should have some appeal to the snobbish indie movie crowd, who will be the most familiar with Peralta and Hardwicke’s previous work. Fortunately, Lords of Dogtown was able to get a PG-13 rating despite the amount of sex and drug use in the movie, which means that younger skateboard enthusiasts can make this their first choice for new movies this weekend, and it might even be able to grab some of the young teen females who are into “skater boyz” away from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Skateboarders are a difficult breed to pin down, so it’s somewhat faulty logic to assume that they’d rush out to see a movie based on their hobby. After all, they’re also the same demographic likely to spend their time playing video games or riding their boards rather than sitting in a theatre. The 2003 skateboard comedy Grind proved this by making almost no money in theatres after a strong promotional push. At least Dogtown has a lot more credibility, both as a movie and a document of the times, since Stacy Peralta and fellow Z-Boy Tony Alva acted as consultants on the production, even training the young actors to ride and do a lot of their own stunts. Awareness for the movie among the young skater crowd is growing thanks to a strong push on MTV, including a half hour special on MTV2, although it’s getting a rather moderate release into less than 2,000 theatres, which is always somewhat worrisome.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Dogtown and Z-Boys	4/26/02	20		$0.10	$5,168	$1.29
Thirteen	8/20/03	108	$1.24	$0.62	$5,783	$4.60
The Four Feathers	9/20/02	1,912		$6.86	$3,587	$18.31
A Knight's Tale	5/11/01	2,980		$16.51	$5,541	$56.08
The Girl Next Door	4/9/04	2,148		$6.00	$2,795	$14.59
The Emperor's Club	11/22/02	809		$3.85	$4,755	$14.06
Walking Tall	4/2/04	2,836		$15.50	$5,466	$45.86
Jackass: The Movie	10/25/02	2,509		$22.76	$9,072	$64.27
Grind	8/15/03	2,253		$2.51	$1,115	$5.11
Almost Famous	9/22/00	1,193	$3.22	$6.93	$5,809	$32.47

Why I Should See It: Stacy Peralta’s story about the origins of professional skateboarding is an interesting one even thirty years later.
Why Not: When a drama is written by one of the players, it’s hard to believe that it’s not a biased account of what happened. If you want to know the facts, go rent Dogtown and Z-Boys instead.

Bottom Line: With its indie roots, Lords of Dogtown might have been better off given a platform release and then expanded based on word-of-mouth, but it should have a strong enough interest among young male skateboarders and the girls that love them to get the MTV audience into see it opening weekend, a certain segment of the subculture should make this their first choice this weekend, as well.

Projection: $7 to 9 million opening weekend on its way to $25 million, which would still be more than the combined total of all the independent movies that the director, writer and stars have been involved in.

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THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS (Warner Brothers Pictures)
Starring: Amber Tamblyn, America Ferrera, Blake Lively, Alexis Bledel, Bradley Whitford, Nancy Travis, Rachel Ticotin, Jenna Boyd
Directed by: Ken Kwapis (He Said She Said, Sesame Presents: Follow that Bird, Dunston Checks In, The Beautician and the Beast)
Genres: Chick Flick, Teen, Based on a Book
Rated PG
Theatre Count: 2,583
Tagline: “Laugh. Cry. Share the pants.” (Ew.)

When four 16-year-old friends realize they won’t be able to spend the summer together, so they go shopping and find a pair of “magic” thrift-shop jeans that somehow fits all of them perfectly. They agree that each one of them will wear the pants for a week over the summer and share the experiences they have in them with the others.

Based on the first in Ann Brashare’s bestselling series of teen books, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants may immediately pull up memories of The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, the similar sounding chick flick based on Rebecca Wells’ best selling book, and it’s hard not to make that comparison. Put up on pedestal by no less than Oprah Winfrey, the movie version of Wells’ book, which starred Sandra Bullock and Ashley Judd, became a huge hit among its primary target audience of women who rushed out to see it opening weekend. Older guys probably won’t know much about Brashare’s novels or whether they have the same cult-like audience as the Oprah Book Club, but apparently, millions of teen girls are familiar with it, and the book’s publisher Random House has tried building a similar buzz around the impending movie on its Sisterhood Central.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants doesn’t have any big box office stars, but it does have four young actresses, three of whom have made a name for themselves for previous projects. Alexis Bledel of the WB series “Gilmore Girls” has the most experience with this type of movie, having starred in 2002’s Tuck Everlasting, also based on a popular teen book. She also played a prostitute in Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller’s Sin City, although that audience won’t be so interested in this. Likewise, Amber Tamblyn has found most of her fans from her starring role on the CBS show “Joan of Arcadia” which was just cancelled despite its cult popularity. They’re both joined by America Ferrera, star of the indie film Real Women Have Curves--she also has a small role in Lords of Dogtown--and Blake Lively, the least experienced of the four actresses, whom comes from a large acting family.

Sisterhood director Ken Kwapis gets a second chance at a film career, having spent the last few years directing television sitcoms after making a few classic ‘90s bombs like The Beautician and the Beast with Fran Drescher and Dunstin Checks In with Jason Alexander. At least, this movie was adapted by Delia Ephron (You’ve Got Mail) and Elizabeth Chandler (What a Girl Wants), two screenwriters with chick flick experience,

Unfortunately, they picked a genre that has been doing notoriously bad with a slew of teen chick flicks bombing over the last year. The most recent example is Disney’s The Ice Princess starring Michelle Trachtenberg, which showed that teen girls won’t go see this type of movie if they don’t have a star like Lindsay Lohan or Hillary Duff in them. The Sisterhood has a slight advantage due to being based on a popular book, something that probably helped Disney’s mega-hit The Princess Diaries, the movie that many feel started this never-ending trend. Mandy Moore followed her debut in that movie with A Walk to Remember, another successful book brought to the screen, but then failed a year later with her third book adaptation, How To Deal. Disney didn’t have as much success with last year’s Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, starring Lindsay Lohan, and even the sequel to The Princess Diaries was disappointing.

With that in mind, Warner Bros. opens it early on Wednesday, hoping to build word-of-mouth or to get some business before the movie loses some of its teen audience to Lords of Dogtown. Chances are that the girls who loved the books will go out to see this one once they know it’s in theatres, although its business might be spread through the month.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Tuck Everlasting	10/11/02	1,185		$5.27	$4,446	$19.14
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood	6/7/02	2,507		$16.17	$6,449	$69.59
The Ice Princess	3/18/05	2,501		$6.80	$2,722	$21.40
A Cinderella Story	7/16/04	2,625		$13.62	$5,190	$51.14
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen	2/20/04	2,503		$9.35	$3,736	$29.30
How to Deal	7/18/03	2,319		$5.81	$2,505	$14.11
What a Girl Wants	4/4/03	2,964		$11.43	$3,858	$35.99
A Walk To Remember	1/25/02	2,411		$12.18	$5,051	$41.23
Beautician and the Beast	2/7/97	1,801		$4.08	$2,265	$11.47
Dunston Checks In	1/12/96	1,290		$3.00	$2,326	$9.42

Why I Should See It: You’re a teen girl and love the books or you just want to see a sweet and touching movie about friendship.
Why Not: If you’re not a teen girl and want to see this, you’re probably going to get a lot of people calling you a “dirty old man” or worse. (Not that I know this from experience.) And that title really, really sucks.

Bottom Line: Teen girl fare hasn’t had much success in the last year, and despite being based on a bestselling book, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants should be no different. Sure, it may have some of the same grrrrl power themes as The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, only twenty years younger, but it doesn’t have any stars that might make it a draw. Tons of teen girls might ooze about wanting to see this, but as has been learned too many times this last year, saying you want to see a movie and actually going to see it are two different stories.

Projection: $3 to 4 million on Wednesday and Thursday with another $9 to 11 million over the weekend. It should have sufficient legs to earn around $30 million total.

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UNDER THE RADAR

Do you live in a major North American city? If so, there are some 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.

This week’s WARRIOR’S PICKS are Pierre Salvadori’s madcap French comedy APRES VOUS (Paramount Classics) and Don Argott’s hilarious documentary ROCK SCHOOL (Newmarket Films), both opening in limited release. Apres Vous is the hilarious tale of how the lives of two very different guys (Daniel Auteuil and Jose Garcia) are permanently linked when one saves the other from a suicide attempt and feels responsible for reuniting him with his ex-girlfriend, only to fall in love with her himself. Mini-Review: A highly amusing and original situational comedy with top-notch comic performances from Auteuil and Garcia that has all the right elements to be adapted into an English language remake. Scenes involving a stray lobster and a wine-tasting audition will have you in stitches. RATING: 9 out of 10. Fans of Jack Black’s School of Rock will want to check out Rock School, the first documentary of the year that has the potential for Super Size Me levels of success. It goes inside the Paul Green School of Rock Music, where the school’s eponymous founder and main teacher drives his kids with all sorts of zany tactics to get them to be better musicians. MY REVIEW

Also opening this weekend in New York and Los Angeles is DEEP BLUE (Miramax Films), a documentary by Alastair Fothergill and Andy Byatt that takes their cameras into the depth of the oceans to explores things that few people ever get a chance to see. It’s narrated by Michael “Dumbledore” Gambon.

Opening in New York, Milwaukee and Minneapolis, is MILWAUKEE, MINNESOTA (Tartan Films), the directorial debut of celebrity agent Allan Mindel, which tells the story of a mentally challenged man with a knack for ice fishing, whose savings becomes the prey of unscrupulous individuals when his overprotective mother dies.

In New York, Cinema Village opens Keren Yedaya’s OR (MY TREASURE) (Kino International), an Israeli drama about a prostitute and her daughter, while Paolo Virzi’s Italian drama CATARINA IN THE BIG CITY (Empire Pictures USA) about a 15-year-old country girl’s new experiences at a school in Rome, opens at the Metro Twin. Werner (Fitzcarraldo) Herzog follows aeronautics expert Dr. Graham Dorrington on his helium balloon journey across the Amazon in the documentary THE WHITE DIAMOND (Werner Herzog Films), which opens at the Film Forum on Wednesday.

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THIS TIME LAST YEAR

Only one new movie opened the first weekend of June last year, but it was the third movie based on J.K. Rowlings’ popular books, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, this time with Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron taking over for Christopher Columbus, who directed the first two. After an opening day of $38 million, the third highest opening ever, it earned $93 million total for the weekend, surpassing the opening weekend of the previous two films and becoming the third highest opening ever. Ultimately, it wouldn’t gross nearly as much as the first two movies, and fans of the books were mixed on whether Cuaron did a better job than Columbus. The previous week’s #1, Shrek 2, took a 47% tumble, but it still was able to bring in almost $38 million against the high profile family film, taking its box office gross over the $300 million mark.

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Next week, a diverse quartet of summer filler including the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie spy thriller Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the French horror film High Tension, an urban remake of The Honeymooners starring Cedric the Entertainer, and Robert Rodriguez’s latest family film (taking a deep breath) The Adventures of Shark Boy & Lava Girl in 3-D.

Copyright 2005 Edward Douglas