Preview and Projections for the Weekend of March 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 and reviews.

WEEKEND PROJECTIONS - final update 3.24.05

You would think that Easter weekend would be a good time to release a new movie, since so many kids will have off from school on Friday and then some will have spring break starting next week. It’s a bit more difficult when you have two comedies competing against each other, one a sequel to a popular favorite and the other featuring two major comic stars. Opening on Thursday, Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous will probably be the stronger draw for women and girls, but the Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac comedy Guess Who will have a wider appeal to more audiences, so it has a better chance of ending up in the top spot this weekend. (Update: Neither movie is very good, but Guess Who is getting better reviews; you can read my reviews below.) Either way, both should derail last week’s horror sequel The Ring Two, which might see a sharp drop-off considering how many people rushed to see it opening day. Expect all three movies, as well as the returning family films like Robots, to do better than normal business on Good Friday but be hit by the normally slow Easter Sunday, which tends to not be a very big movie day.

TW	LW	Title	Weekend (in millions)	Change	# Of Theaters	Average	Week
1	New	Guess Who	$23.0	N/A	3,147	$7,309	1
2	New	Miss Congeniality 2	$19.6	N/A	3,183	$6,158	1
3	1	The Ring 2	$17.0	-52%	3,341	$5,088	2
4	2	Robots	$13.0	-38%	3,431	$3,789	3
5	3	The Pacifier	$8.2	-35%	3,102	$2,643	4
6	4	Ice Princess	$4.2	-38%	2,501	$1,679	2
7	5	Hitch	$4.0	-38%	2,233	$1,791	7
8	6	Be Cool	$3.1	-48%	1,883	$1,646	4
9	7	Hostage	$3.1	-47%	1,977	$1,568	3
10	8	Million Dollar Baby	$2.5	-38%	1,710	$1,462	15
			Est. Weekend Total $97.70	Est. Avg. Drop-Off -42%		Est. Average PTA $3,313

---

GUESS WHO (Columbia Pictures)
Starring: Bernie Mac, Ashton Kutcher, Zoe Saldana, Jonelle Kennedy, Jessica Cauffiel, RonReaco Lee, Andy Morrow, Sherri Shepherd, Kelee Stewart
Directed by: Kevin Rodney Sullivan (Barbershop 2)
Genres: Comedy, Romance
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 3,147
Tagline: “Some in-laws were meant to be broken.”
Mini-Review: An incredibly stupid and obvious comedy that puts race relations back at least forty years, making it far less funny than its obvious prototype, Meet the Parents. Kutcher isn't nearly as good playing the straight man, but just as the pairing is about to win you over, it ditches the laughs and gets all sentimental. Rating: 4 out of 10

Percy Jones (Bernie Mac) is trying to protect his daughter Theresa (Zoe Saldana) from ending up with the wrong guy, and though he does a thorough background check on her new boyfriend Simon (Ashton Kutcher), there’s only one thing his research didn’t tell him. He’s white!!! And he wants to marry his daughter!!!

Yup. Can’t get much higher concept then that, and though the thought of pairing Bernie Mac and Ashton Kutcher may seem like comic genius, this isn’t exactly an original idea. Although it looks like an interracial version of Meet the Parents, it’s actually a comedy reinvention of the classic 1967 Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. That film’s controversial plot involved a couple whose perceptions are changed when their daughter brings home her black fiancé. In this case, Guess Who follows the recent Hollywood tradition of “urbanizing” every film ever made, by simply reversing the roles, changing the race of the family and the dinner guest, and throwing in two comedy stars that should be able to play well off each other.

Bernie Mac seems to have a solid career going with a successful FOX sitcom and key roles in big movies like Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle and Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve, although that has yet to translate into his own box office success. His last movie Mr. 3000 was his first where he was the sole star, but it failed to find either the urban or family audiences that Disney might have been expecting based on the success of his show. Still, Mac has done well when paired with another strong star like Head of State’s Chris Rock or Bad Santa’s Billy Bob Thornton, both moderate hits. What makes Guess Who a bit of an anomaly is that it’s a movie targeted mainly towards African-American audiences, who have brought so much business to theatres this year, but Mac’s co-star is arguably one of the whitest guys in Hollywood, Ashton Kutcher, which is where the film’s main humor lies.

In the last year, Kutcher has become better known for his relationship with the significantly older Demi Moore than any of his work, and that is despite his continued runs on two popular television shows, Fox’s “That ‘70s Show” and his own hidden camera gag show, “Punk’d” on MTV. These commitments have kept his movie output fairly low. It has been over a year since his last film, the dark thriller The Butterfly Effect, which did well despite not being Kutcher’s typical comedy. In 2003, he had three comedies, beginning with the romantic comedy hit Just Married, co-starring then girlfriend Brittany Murphy, followed by the long-delayed low brow comedy My Boss’ Daughter, which flopped over the summer. That bomb might have made some doubt Kutcher’s box office pull, but he then brought a lot of moviegoers into theatres to see Steve Martin’s holiday comedy Cheaper by the Dozen—another remake!--despite being uncredited for the role. He still has a pretty solid fanbase among teens, both guys and girls, who are more likely to see this comedy than the Sandra Bullock sequel (see below) and Kutcher will try to continue his run with next month’s romantic comedy A Lot Like Love, co-starring Amanda Peet.

Ashton and Bernie
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Mr. 3000	9/17/04	2,736		$8.68	$3,172	$21.80
Bad Santa	11/28/03	2,005	$4.51	$12.29	$6,131	$59.43
Head of State	3/28/03	2,151		$13.50	$6,278	$37.79
The Butterfly Effect	1/23/04	2,605		$17.07	$6,551	$57.65
Cheaper By the Dozen	12/26/03	3,298	$8.18	$27.56	$8,356	$128.03
My Boss's Daughter	8/22/03	2,201		$4.86	$2,206	$15.55
Just Married	1/10/03	2,766		$17.55	$6,345	$56.13
Dude, Where's My Car?	12/15/00	2,087		$13.85	$6,634	$46.72

The comedy is directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan, the man behind the urban comedy sequel Barbershop 2 and written by David Roon, whose resume includes unmemorable interracial buddy comedies like National Security and I Spy, as well as the long delayed Matt Perry bomb Serving Sara. (Next up for Roon is another remake of the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Back to School, presumably with an African American star.)

Sony has been having a good year for comedies with both Ice Cube’s Are We There Yet and Will Smith’s Hitch bringing in a lot of business over the last few months. They’ve used similar techniques for Guess Who, airing non-stop commercials to make sure awareness is high, although they tried the same thing with Tommy Lee Jones’ Man of the House a few weeks back, and that was Sony’s only release of the year to not open at #1. Except for the Ice Cube family comedy, all of those films combined a white and an African-American star in hopes of bringing in wider audiences, and Guess Who will shortly benefit from having two strong fanbases to pull from. In many ways, the very idea caters to the crowd who enjoyed seeing the very different Queen Latifah and Steve Martin on screen together for the March 2003 hit Bringing Down the House.

Unfortunately, Easter weekend might not be the best time to open a comedy, since movies tend to do most of their business before the weekend with teens being out of school on Good Friday. The last two Easter weekends have seen relatively successful comedies in Malibu’s Most Wanted and Johnson Family Vacation, although neither of them had very strong stars, nor the promotional muscle of Sony behind them. They also didn’t have very strong comedy competition either. Guess Who may lose a lot of girls and women to the sequel to Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality, which opens on Thursday, although this will still have the guys and the dating crowd, who will probably go for the situational comedy over the sequel, giving it a slight advantage.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Johnson Family Vacation	4/9/04	1,317	$2.44	$9.38	$7,119	$31.18
Malibu's Most Wanted	4/18/03	2,503		$12.62	$5,041	$34.31
The In-Laws	5/23/03	2,652		$9.22	$3,477	$20.44
Bringing Down the House	3/7/03	2,801		$31.10	$11,104	$132.68
Meet the Fockers	12/24/04	3,518	$24.40	$46.12	$13,110	$275.94
Meet the Parents	10/6/00	2,614		$28.62	$10,949	$166.23
National Security	1/17/03	2,729		$14.37	$5,266	$36.29
I Spy	11/1/02	3,182		$12.75	$4,008	$33.11

Why I Should See It: The pairing of two hilarious comic stars with a tried and true situational premise should make Guess Who a very funny comedy.
Why Not: Once you get past the concept and the stars, it's down to the writing and the writer's previous two buddy comedies (bottom of the chart above) don't bode well for this one.

Bottom Line: While the buddy comedy has seen better days, this situational comedy pairing two very different comic stars is solid enough to bring in the teens as well as the African-American community this weekend, which should allow it to take the top spot despite the heavy competition.

Projection: $21 to 24 million on its way to $60 million total.

---

MISS CONGENIALITY 2: ARMED AND FABULOUS (Warner Brothers Pictures)
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Regina King, Enrique Murciano, Diedrich Bader, Heather Burns, William Shatner, Nick Offerman, Abraham Benrubi, Treat Williams, Elisabeth Rohm, Ernie Hudson, Lusia Strus, Leslie Erin Grossman, Susan Chuang, William O'Leary, John DiResta
Directed by: John Paquin (The Santa Clause, Jungle 2 Jungle, Joe Somebody)
Genres: Comedy, Romance, Sequel
Rated PG-13
Theatre Count: 3,183
Mini-Review: Another pointless, but perfectly harmless, by-the-books sequel that should appeal to Bullock's fans with enough funny gags and chuckles to make up for the weak plot. For those who don't care for Bullock, Regina King brings enough to the table to make their scenes together some of the best. Rating: 6 out of 10

Sandra Bullock returns as Gracie Hart, the federal agent who went undercover at the Miss United States pageant four years ago. When the pagent emcee Stan Fields (William Shatner) and Miss USA (Heather Burns) are kidnapped in Las Vegas, Gracie needs to put aside her cushy lifestyle on the talk show circuit to go back into action, taking on a very unhappy new parter in Sam Fuller (Regina King).

March 2005 should now officially be referred to as “the month of the sequel” with the third one in four weeks trying to get jaded moviegoers into theatres. (Never fear, next week’s Beauty Shop is more of a spin-off than a sequel.) Like Be Cool earlier this month, no one really asked for a sequel to Sandra Bullock’s Miss Congeniality, but when a movie grosses more than $100 million and its star hasn’t had a big hit in awhile, it just makes sense for them to revisit familiar territory.

The original Miss Congeniality found a solid audience in women and girls over the Christmas holidays four years ago due to the premise of Sandra Bullock playing a federal agent going undercover at a beauty pageant. In the four years since it left theatres, it’s become a bit of a classic thanks to the secondary market of cable and television, nearly doubling its box office over seas and then racking up yet another $100 million in video rentals.

After the disaster that was 1997’s flop Speed 2: Cruise Control, which grossed less than half the original movie, it’s surprising to see Sandra Bullock doing another sequel. Still, somehow Sandra has a way of bouncing back with a career that constantly proves why she’s considered a solid leading actress. After her failed attempt to break away from romantic comedies with the 2002 thriller Murder by Numbers, Bullock returned with back-to-back hits in The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, based on the popular women’s book, and the romantic comedy Two Weeks Notice, with Hugh Grant. In the two years since then, she’s laid fairly low, but Miss Congeniality 2 seems like the perfect movie for Bullock to welcome back her old fans for her return.

Returning from the original film are William Shatner as emcee Stan Fields, Heather Burns as Miss Rhode Island, and Ernie Hudson as Agent MacDonald, none of them who will be that much of a draw fans of the first movie. Candace Bergen, who brought so much to the first movie is missing in action. Also returning is original screenwriter Mark Lawrence, who has written many of Sandra’s biggest hits including Two Weeks Notice, but the sequel is directed by Joe Pasquin, best known for helming many of Tim Allen’s comedies including the hugely popular The Santa Clause, as well as lesser films Jungle 2 Jungle and Joe Somebody. He’s definitely a director who knows comedy, especially slapstick, and he could bring a different dynamic to the sequel, for better or worse.

In hopes of getting some of the African-American audience away from Guess Who, the sequel introduces a new character, a feisty agent named Sam Fuller played by Regina King, whom Gracie has to work with on this latest assignment. At this point, King is best known for blowing audiences away with her performance as one of Ray Charles’ back-up singers in the Oscar nominated biopic Ray, but she already has some sequel experience having appeared in the 2003 sequel Legally Blonde 2. Much of this sequel's laughs rely on her chemistry (or lack thereof) with Bullock.

America seems to be down on sequels, especially comedy sequels, and in the last few months, follow-ups to Get Shorty and Bridget Jones’ Diary have underperformed. A few years ago, the sequel to the Billy Crystal-Robert DeNiro gangster comedy Analyze This did poorly, and last Easter, Warner Brothers tried unsuccessfully to open a sequel to the Matthew Perry-Bruce Willis crime comedy The Whole Nine Yards. At least in this case, Bullock has her own built-in audience that loves her in this type of role, so Miss Congeniality 2 could follow along the lines of Reese Witherspoon’s Legally Blonde 2, which only made slightly less than the original in the summer of 2003.

Miss Congeniality 2 is opening on Thursday, a day earlier than normal, probably in hopes of taking advantage of the lack of school on Friday, so that women and girls who liked the first movie will rush out to see it Thursday night. Of course, Warner Brothers may also be nervous about what looks like a much stronger comedy in Guess Who opening the next day in almost as many theatres. The trailers and commercials for Miss Congeniality don’t look nearly as funny as those for Guess Who, resorting to physical comedy like Regis Philbin being punched in the groin to get laughs; some women might prefer the situational comedy of Guess Who. Since few guys will be seeing this movie unless dragged to see it by girlfriends or wives, this sequel’s more limited audience will give it a disadvantage at winning the comedy battle this weekend.

Related Comparisons
Title	Release Date	Theater Count	Previous Box Office (in millions)	Weekend Box Office (in millions)	Average	Total Box Office
Miss Congeniality	12/22/00	2,668		$10.05	$3,667	$106.81
Two Weeks Notice	12/20/02	2,755		$14.40	$5,227	$88.82
The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood	6/7/02	2,507		$16.17	$6,449	$69.59
Forces of Nature	3/19/99	2,058		$13.51	$6,565	$52.88
Speed 2	6/13/97	2,615		$16.16	$6,180	$48.08
Speed	6/10/94	2,138		$14.46	$6,763	$121.25
Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde	7/4/03	3,350	$16.29	$22.22	$6,655	$89.68
Legally Blonde	7/13/01	2,620		$20.38	$7,778	$95.66
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason	11/12/04	530		$8.68	$16,385	$40.20
Bridget Jones's Diary	4/13/01	1,611		$10.73	$6,662	$71.50
The Whole Ten Yards	4/9/04	2,654		$6.69	$2,519	$16.32
The Whole Nine Yards	2/18/00	2,910		$13.73	$4,720	$57.26

Why I Should See It: Sandra Bullock back doing what she does best and playing a character that many people love. Seems like a pretty safe bet.
Why Not: That may very well be the worst sub-title for a sequel ever. What were they thinking?

Bottom Line: Although Sandra Bullock has been out of the limelight for some time, her return to a franchise that helped solidify her female fan base should bring many of them back into theatres this weekend even if it struggles against the higher profile stars and laughs of Guess Who. Its Thursday opening may very well be the key to its weekend, as it will either help if word-of-mouth is good or kill it completely, that is, if anyone even realizes it opens on Thursday.

Projection: $5 to 6 million on Thursday and $19 to 21 million over the weekend on its way to $60 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.

Opening in Limited Release:
D.E.B.S. (Samuel Goldwyn Films)
OLDBOY (Tartan Films)

D.E.B.S are government trained college co-eds, who fight crime and international evil, but they have problems when their team leader (The Big Bounce’s Sara Foster) falls in love with an evil world terrorist, played by The Fast and the Furious star Jordana Brewster. Sexual experimentation hijinx ensue! Directed by Angela Robinson, who is currently directing Disney’s Herbie: Fully Loaded with Lindsay Lohan, D.E.B.S. opens in select cities this weekend. MY REVIEW

WARRIOR’S PICK: Park Chanwook’s Oldboy is an action-packed revenge thriller about a man imprisoned in a room for fifteen years with nothing but a television. Once he gets out, he’s mad as hell and will do anything to find out who put him in there and why. Brought to the 2004 Cannes Film Festival by Quentin Tarantino himself, Oldboy opens in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago this weekend. MY REVIEW

Opening in New York and Los Angeles:
THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE (IFC Films)

Daniel Day Lewis plays a dying man living an isolated life on an island commune with his daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) in the third film by his wife Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocity). Complex conflicts arise when he invites his girlfriend (Catherine Kenner) and her two sons to live with them. The Ballad of Jack and Rose will expand into major cities after its platform release this weekend. MY REVIEW

Opening in New York:
LIPSTICK & DYNAMITE: THE FIRST LADIES OF WRESTLING (Koch Lorber Films)
MONDOVINO (ThinkFilm)
NINA’S TRAGEDIES (Wellspring Media)

Ruth Leitman’s documentary Lipstick & Dynamite takes a look at the history of women in wrestling dating back to the ‘40s and ‘50s, featuring interviews with legendary wrestlers like “Killem” Gillem, the Fabulous Moolah, Mae Young and many more. The almost all-woman production opens in New York Friday and in Los Angeles on April 8.

Mini-Review: Long-time wrestling fans should be thrilled to hear the inside scoop about how women wrestlers have survived in the male-dominated world for so many decades, showing true guts and endurance. The brilliant interviews also show these women to have true human emotions that you rarely get to see while they’re performing. An entertaining and well-executed documentary. Rating: 8 out of 10

And on the other side of the documentary fence is Mondovino, Jonathan Nossiter’s intensive look at the wine industry. Originally planned as a ten-hour television series like those done by Ken Burns, it looks at the politics and psychology of wine with footage from three continents and interviews with major wine manufacturers, a top wine consultant, a famous critic, and others. After debuting at the Cannes Film Festival, Mondovino opens at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday.

Mini-Review: What this fascinating and thorough documentary lacks in production values and brevity, it makes up for with charm and a true passion for the subject matter. Although the interview subjects tend to be mostly pretentious, this two-hour plus documentary represents the last word on the wine industry and hopefully, the full version will eventually see the light of day. Rating: 7 out of 10

Nina’s Tragedies from Israeli director Savi Gavison is a coming of age story about a 14-year-old boy asked by his mother to move in with his attractive recently widowed Aunt Nina, leading to some funny and poignant moments. Winner of 11 of Israel’s equivalent to the Oscars, the romantic dramedy opens in New York this weekend.

---

THIS TIME LAST YEAR

The last weekend of March 2004 wasn’t Easter, but it also had a sequel and a few too many comedies facing off against each other. After the movie version of the cartoon classic Scooby Doo earned over $50 million its opening weekend in 2002, its sequel didn’t seem like it stood a chance of duplicating that feat. True enough, Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed earned just under $30 million its opening weekend, still impressive for a kids’ movie opening in March. Teaming Tom Hanks with the Coen Brothers would seem like a sure-fire hit, and their remake of the Peter Sellers comedy The Ladykillers did decently despite opening in fewer than 1,600 theatres. It narrowly defeated Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ for second place with an opening just over $12 million. Kevin Smith’s romantic comedy Jersey Girl, reteaming Ben Affleck with his Armageddon co-star Liv Tyler, earned $4 million less than Ladykillers in the same number of theatres. As expected, the previous week’s #1 movie, the remake of Dawn of the Dead, took a huge hit in its second weekend, dropping 60% to just under $11 million, settling for fourth place.

---

Next week, Frank Miller’s Sin City graphic novels hit the big screen as co-directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, while Queen Latifah stars in the Barbershop comedy spin-off Beauty Shop.

Copyright 2005 Edward Douglas