Original Sin

April 1, 2005

April gets off to a fast start with the mostly highly anticipated film of the month debuting tonight. It should win, and win big - more than doubling its nearest competitor.

Sin City is the most anticipated movie of the month (only The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes close). Visually the film is striking, as is the pulp noir storytelling, which has a lot to do with the film's performance with the critics. However, there is also a nearly complete lack of sympathetic characters (the good guys are merely less bad than the bad guys are), and there's enough violence of a particularly brutal level that even the most jaded moviegoer is bound to be shocked by something. Strong tracking has the film opening on a similar level as fellow comic adaptation, Constantine, so look for $30 million this weekend and over $80 million overall and a sequel to be greenlit by the time Friday's numbers are in.

Midweek openings are tricky to pull off and should probably be left to event movies only. Case in point, Beauty Shop's performance on Wednesday. The spin-off managed just $2.074 million on its opening day, just half of what was expected. The only good news is it could improve its box office on Thursday, and if it does it won't miss its projection by much, $13 million compared to $14 million. If the film dips on Thursday, the film could miss $10 million over the weekend. Best guess, $12 million and second place.

Falling just behind will be Guess Who with $11.5 million. That would put the film's total box office at just shy of $40 million after two weeks and on pace to beat initial expectations just over a week later.

The last two spots in the top ten will be fought over in a close battle between Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous and Robots. Both films should bring in between $9 and $8 million, with the former having the slight advantage. The latter film, on the other hand, will crack $100 million over the weekend, becoming just the second film from 2005 to do so.

Two other notes:

The Upside of Anger expands its theater count to 1,111 over the weekend and it should easily make the top ten, placing as high as sixth. Most likely the film will place eighth with just over $5 million.

Fever Pitch has a sneak peak in 450 theaters throughout the weekend.


Submitted by:

Filed under: Robots, Sin City, Guess Who, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, Fever Pitch, Beauty Shop, The Upside of Anger