Weekend Preview: November 6th - 8th

November starts off with a bang this weekend, with four new releases looking to stir up some winter business. Jim Carrey's big new animated adventure, A Christmas Carol, debuts tomorrow. Carrey is no stranger to big holiday films, from How the Grinch Stole Christmas ($260 million) to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events ($118 million). A Christmas Carol is the third motion-caputure style of animation from Zemeckis, following The Polar Express ($180 million) and Beowulf ($82 million). A Christmas Carol should easily catch the #1 postion this weekend. Its had its advertisements everywhere, my only concern is how appealing they are to children. The colors are very dark and it's not Santa-related like The Polar Express. More importantly, the trailers aren't terribly funny. Still, Jim Carrey will still find a large audience which will give A Christmas Carol around a $30 million gross this weekend and a long run ahead throughout Christmas.

Our other 3 releases are fighting to top This Is It's second weekend. The Men Who Stare At Goats has the best chance in my opinion. It has a very funny trailer with a very unique premise. The posters stand out, especially the obvious title. It doesn't have as good of polls as Burn After Reading, but it still should pull around a $16 million opening. 

The Box and The Fourth Kind are looking for horror fans craving more after Halloween. The Fourth Kind has a particularly disturbingly real trailer, a la Paranormal Activity. That will also hurt it as much as it helps it, considering Paranormal Activity has now stolen its thunder and audience. It should pull around an $11 million opening this weekend. The Box headlines Cameron Diaz as its star and centers around a mysterious box that when pressed, gives a couple $1 million, but will also kill someone. If only the trailers focused just on this! Instead, the trailers abandon the "box" halfway through and jump to other random plot points, all the while forgetting to establish Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as real characters. This will make The Box the lowest grossing new release of the four with around $8 million.

My predictions:
1. A Christmas Carol - $29.2 million (NEW)
2. The Men Who Stare At Goals - $16 million (NEW)
3. Michael Jackson's This Is It - $13.5 million (-42%)
4. The Fourth Kind - $11 million (NEW)
5. The Box - $7.8 million (NEW)
6. Paranormal Activity - $7.8 million (-52%)
7. Law Abiding Citizen - $4.5 million (-39%)
8. Couples Retreat - $3.9 million (-40%)
9. Where the Wild Things Are - $2.7 million (-55%)
10. Saw VI - $1.9 million (-62%)


On the holdovers, This Is It should hold relatively well since the initial demand was burned off last week by opening on a Wednesday instead of a Friday. It is also showing very good word of mouth. Paranormal Activity will suffer from good Halloween dailies last weekend as well as two new horror entries. Where the Wild Things Are really can't catch a break, as it will most likely fall over 55% for the third weekend in a row.


Last weekend's accuracy: 87.23% (Ranked # 66 of 465) - Definitely not as high ranked as I wanted to be. I way underestimated Halloween's effect on the family films and used the wrong number for Couples Retreat.