Forecast: 'Five-Year' Will Likely Lead Last Weekend of Spring

On what will forever be known as "that weekend before The Avengers opened," four new nationwide releases hit theaters. With its strong cast and connection to Bridesmaids, The Five-Year Engagement appears to have the best chance of finishing in first, though its theater count (2,936) trails that of Aardman Animation flick The Pirates! Band of Misfits (3,358). The Raven and Safe also debut this weekend, though neither of these titles has much of a chance of cracking the Top Three.

The Five-Year Engagement reteams Forgetting Sarah Marshall writer-director Nick Stoller with writer-actor Jason Segel. That movie opened to $17.7 million in April 2008 on its way to $63.2 million, and it's fairly well-regarded among comedy fans today (it has a 7.3 rating on IMDb, which is identical to the rating for Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin). For The Five-Year Engagement, though, the Forgetting Sarah Marshall connection has taken a backseat to a potentially much more powerful one—the movie is also the latest from producer Judd Apatow, who brought last May's wedding comedy sensation Bridesmaids ($169.1 million total) to the big screen.

With an identical pink and white font scheme and a consistent producer citation in nearly all advertisements, Universal's marketing campaign has essentially made The Five-Year Engagement look like a spin-off to Bridesmaids. The movie isn't receiving quite as much buzz at this point, though, and it's a more competitive marketplace for female-skewing movies (Think Like a Man, The Lucky One and The Hunger Games should account for at least $35 million in ticket sales this weekend). Still, with a wedding angle targeting women and the Apatow R-rated humor targeting men, The Five-Year Engagement should be a strong date night choice this weekend. Universal is modestly projecting an opening in the low-teen-millions.

The Pirates! Band of Misfits is the latest movie from Aardman Animation, and it's their first stop-motion effort since 2005's Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Aardman movies have opened consistently between $16 and $19 million, and that even includes Arthur Christmas when looking at its five-day Thanksgiving debut. Bringing pirates in to the mix should help keep things at around the same level, and the movie should also benefit from the fact that it's the first animated offering in nearly two months. So far, The Pirates! has earned at least $56 million overseas, and Sony is expecting around $10 million in domestic coin this weekend.

The Raven finds author Edgar Allen Poe entwined in a gothic serial killer investigation that calls to mind From Hell, which opened to $11 million in 2001. Putting Poe on the case is also reminiscent of the movie The Brothers Grimm ($15.1 million debut), which had the titular author duo battling the kind of creatures they may have written about. Opening somewhere in between these two movies is probably the best case scenario for The Raven, which Relativity Media has modestly marketed after acquiring U.S. rights for $4 million. The studio is currently expecting between $8 and $10 million for the weekend.

Jason Statham has successfully established himself as a high-octane action star over the past decade, and lately his movies have performed at a fairly consistent (albeit not very high) level. Safe fits firmly in to this mold, though Statham isn't receiving any assistance this time either from a big-name star like Robert DeNiro (Killer Elite) or an established brand (Transporter 3). Lionsgate has released a handful of Statham movies, including Crank: High Voltage ($7 million opening) in April 2009, and they are expecting between $6 and $8 million this weekend.

Weekend Forecast (April 27-29)
1. The Five-Year Engagement - $22.5 million
2. Think Like a Man - $17.8 million (-47%)
3. The Pirates! - $16.3 million
4. The Lucky One - $11.3 million (-50%)
5. The Hunger Games - $10.4 million (-29%)
6. The Raven - $10.1 million
7. Safe - $7.5 million

Bar for Success
The Five-Year Engagement needs to reach the $17.5 million that Nick Stoller's two previous projects did. With a super-wide release, The Pirates! Band of Misfits ought to open to the Aardman standard of $16 million. The Raven is in great shape if it can get close to $15 million, while Safe is fine if it gets over $10 million.

Forecast: Efron, Harvey Should Finally Defeat 'Hunger Games'

After ruling for four weeks, it's a foregone conclusion that The Hunger Games will finally give up its place atop the box office—the big question, though, is whether The Lucky One or Think Like a Man winds up replacing it. Nicholas Sparks romance The Lucky One, opening in 3,155 locations this weekend, has seemed like the safe bet for a while now. However, Think Like a Man appears to be receiving a surge of interest, and Sony/Screen Gems has managed to get the movie in to 2,015 theaters (up from an estimate of 1,800). Also opening this weekend is Disneynature's fourth documentary, Chimpanzee, though it's only reaching 1,563 theaters and could end up outside of the Top Five.

The Lucky One is the seventh movie adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel, and for the most part the movies have been at least mildly successful. The most recent adaptations both arrived in the first quarter of 2010—Dear John took the top spot from Avatar at the beginning of February with $30.5 million, and The Last Song scored $25.4 million in its five-day opening. With its military connection, The Lucky One is closest thematically to Dear John, though the two leads aren't nearly as strong. Dear John had Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, while The Lucky One has Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling.

Schilling's biggest theatrical credit to date is from Atlas Shrugged: Part I, which bombed last year with just $4.6 million. With High School Musical 3: Senior Year and 17 Again, Zac Efron has obviously had a lot more success, though his last foray in to drama—Charlie St. Cloud—disappointed with just $31.2 million total. Just because the Efron/Schilling pairing isn't as strong as Tatum/Seyfried doesn't mean that The Lucky One can't succeed on its own terms, though—ads have highlighted the steamy romance while establishing some conflict, and the movie will certainly be a strong choice for young women this weekend.

Though The Lucky One has the Sparks/Efron pedigree, Think Like a Man could wind up playing spoiler this weekend. Based on Steve Harvey's popular book of the same name, Think Like a Man is a comedy that appears to play out a battle of the sexes when women start doing what the title says, much to the chagrin of the men involved. If that premise wasn't enough to get date night audiences invested, the movie has a strong ensemble cast made up of (mostly) African-American actors like Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy and Romany Malco on the men's side and Regina Hall, Taraji P. Henson and Gabrielle Union on the women's side. Sony's Screen Gems division has been generally successful when targeting African American audiences—virtually all of these movies open over $15 million, and Obsessed debuted to $28.6 million around this time in 2009.

A more modest, but also more accurate comparison is April 2010 comedy Death at a Funeral, which opened to $16.2 million on its way to $42.7 million. Think Like a Man's cast isn't quite as well-known (Death at a Funeral had Chris Rock and Tracy Morgan, among many others), but its premise is far more appealing. Sony is expecting at least $17 million for the weekend, though with a massive 42 percent of Thursday's ticket sales on Fandango, the movie could wind up significantly higher than that.

Chimpanzee is Disneynature's fourth movie released in conjunction with Earth Day following Earth ($32 million), Oceans ($19.4 million) and most recently African Cats ($15.4 million). The movies have had steadily-declining grosses, though that's at least in part due to a consistent narrowing of scope. Considering Chimpanzee is only slightly more specific than African Cats, and considering that it's opening in significantly more locations (1,563 vs. 1,224), it's definitely possible that Chimpanzee turns things around a bit for this franchise.

Weekend Forecast (April 20-22)
1. Think Like a Man - $25.8 million
2. The Lucky One - $21.2 million
3. The Hunger Games - $12.2 million (-42%)
4. The Three Stooges - $10.4 million (-39%)
5. The Cabin in the Woods - $7.5 million (-49%)
6. Chimpanzee - $7.3 million

Bar for Success
Adjusting relevant Nicholas Sparks movies for inflation, The Lucky One really ought to be opening over $20 million. Think Like a Man is in good shape if it winds up at the same level as Death at a Funeral ($16.2 million), while Chimpanzee just needs to hold even with African Cats ($6 million).

Dick Clark dead at 82

Famed television personality Dick Clark died of a heart attack Wednesday morning in Los Angeles, his spokesman confirms. Clark was 82.

Clark is best known for hosting long-running television shows such as "American Bandstand," the game show "Pyramid" and "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve."

He was nicknamed "America's oldest teenager" and maintained his youthful looks into his 70s.

Clark had been in St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., after undergoing an outpatient procedure Tuesday night. He suffered the heart attack following the procedure and attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful.

Forecast: 'Stooges,' 'Cabin' Try to Knock Out Katniss

Three new nationwide releases enter the fray this weekend, though there's a good chance that The Hunger Games claims the top spot for the fourth time in a row. The Three Stooges will practice their particular brand of slapstick at 3,476 locations, while The Cabin in the Woods opens at 2,811 theaters and Lockout blasts off at 2,308 venues.

With a strong brand name and an extremely wide release (10th-widest ever in April), The Three Stooges has the best chance of defeating The Hunger Games this weekend. The Stooges starred in nearly 200 short films in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and these shorts were later syndicated on TV (they also starred or were featured in over 20 movies). While most TV remakes don't go back to the 50s and 60s, there are a few recent examples that do. Bewitched opened to $20.1 million, while Get Smart was a solid hit with a $38.7 million debut. On the other hand, The Honeymooners adaptation bombed with a $5.5 million opening in 2005.

The Farrelly Brothers, who wrote and directed The Three Stooges, made the decision to bring the characters to the modern day while retaining the outlandish slapstick that made the group so famous in the first place. That makes for an awkward juxtaposition, though, and the reaction to the first trailer wasn't all that enthusiastic. Distributor 20th Century Fox clearly took note of how absurd the whole thing was, and ramped up their marketing effort as a result.

Stand-out ads include a drug commercial parody for "Stoogesta" and a spot that instructs women to send their men to see The Three Stooges while they go and spend a day at the spa. These have gone a long way to increasing awareness, though by exclusively targeting men they are limiting their potential audience (not that women were probably all that interested to begin with). Fox is hoping for a $10 million opening, though with such a wide release it should be able to debut at least in the mid-teen-millions.

The Cabin in the Woods was filmed back in 2009, before star Chris Hemsworth had even been cast as the title character in Thor. Thanks to MGM's bankruptcy problems, though, the Joss Whedon-produced horror satire has languished on the shelf for nearly three years, and even flirted with a 3D conversion at one point. Apparently, the time it took to get to the big screen wasn't indicative of quality, as the movie has so far received exceptional reviews (91 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes as of Thursday afternoon).

Regardless of the reviews, and the movie's prime Friday the 13th release date, it's unlikely to break out due to its reportedly meta nature. By keeping the twisty and self-reflective narrative under wraps, the movie has wound up looking like standard haunted house fare, and no amount of fanboy praise is enough to overcome this hurdle. Distributor Lionsgate (who took over for MGM) released the similarly genre-bending Kick-Ass at the exact same time two years ago—that movie scored $19.8 million on its opening weekend, a figure that's likely just out of Cabin's reach (Lionsgate is forecasting between $10 and $12 million).

With its schlocky, somewhat retro feel, sci-fi actioner Lockout is probably the odd-man-out this weekend. Aside from Taken, producer Luc Besson's recent movies have opened between $8 and $12 million. With a slightly smaller release, Lockout may have a tough time even reaching the low end of that range (studio expectations put it in the $6-8 million range).

Weekend Forecast (April 13-15)
1. The Hunger Games - $19.9 million (-40%)
2. The Three Stooges - $17.5 million
3. The Cabin in the Woods - $15.1 million
4. Titanic 3D - $11.2 million (-35%)
5. American Reunion - $10.8 million (-50%)
-. Lockout - $7.5 million

Bar for Success
Major TV adaptations almost always open over $20 million, and the Stooges really ought to be hitting that target as well. The Cabin in the Woods is fine over $15 million, while Lockout just needs to make it in to that Luc Besson sweet spot (around $10 million) to get a pass.

Mike Wallace, '60 Minutes' star interviewer, dies

NEW YORK (AP) — Mike Wallace didn't interview people. He interrogated them. He cross-examined them. Sometimes he eviscerated them.

His reputation was so fearsome that it was often said that the scariest words in the English language were "Mike Wallace is here to see you."

Wallace, whose pitiless, prosecutorial style transformed television journalism and made "60 Minutes" compulsively watchable, died Saturday night at a care facility in New Canaan, Conn., where he had lived in recent years, CBS spokesman Kevin Tedesco said. He was 93.

Until he was slowed by heart surgery as he neared his 90th birthday in 2008, Wallace continued making news, doing "60 Minutes" interviews with such subjects as Jack Kevorkian and Roger Clemens. He had promised to still do occasional reports when he announced his retirement as a correspondent in 2006.

Wallace, whose career spanned 60 years, said then that he had long vowed to retire "when my toes turn up" and "they're just beginning to curl a trifle. ... It's become apparent to me that my eyes and ears, among other appurtenances, aren't quite what they used to be."

Among his later contributions, after bowing out as a regular, was a 2007 profile of GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, and an interview with Kevorkian, the assisted suicide doctor released from prison in 2007 who died last year.

In December 2007, Wallace landed the first interview with Clemens after the star pitcher was implicated in the Mitchell report on performance enhancing drugs in baseball. The interview, in which Clemens maintained his innocence, was broadcast in early 2008.

Wallace's "extraordinary contribution as a broadcaster is immeasurable and he has been a force within the television industry throughout its existence," Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. president and CEO, said in a statement Sunday.

Wallace was the first man hired when late CBS news producer Don Hewitt put together the staff of "60 Minutes" at its inception in 1968. The show wasn't a hit at first, but it worked its way up to the top 10 in the 1977-78 season and remained there, season after season, with Wallace as one of its mainstays. Among other things, it proved there could be big profits in TV journalism.

The top 10 streak was broken in 2001, in part due to the onset of huge-drawing rated reality shows. But "60 Minutes" remained in the top 25 in recent years, ranking 15th in viewers in the 2010-11 season.

The show pioneered the use of "ambush interviews," with reporter and camera crew corralling alleged wrongdoers in parking lots, hallways, wherever a comment — or at least a stricken expression — might be harvested from someone dodging the reporters' phone calls.

Such tactics were phased out over time — Wallace said they provided drama but not much good information.

And his style never was all about surprise, anyway. Wallace was a master of the skeptical follow-up question, coaxing his prey with a "forgive me, but ..." or a simple, "come on." He was known as one who did his homework, spending hours preparing for interviews, and alongside the exposes, "60 Minutes" featured insightful talks with celebrities and world leaders.

He was equally tough on public and private behavior. In 1973, with the Watergate scandal growing, he sat with top Nixon aide John Ehrlichman and read a long list of alleged crimes, from money laundering to obstructing justice. "All of this," Wallace noted, "by the law and order administration of Richard Nixon."

The surly Ehrlichman could only respond: "Is there a question in there somewhere?"

In the early 1990s, Wallace reduced Barbra Streisand to tears as he scolded her for being "totally self-absorbed" when she was young and mocked her decades of psychoanalysis. "What is it she is trying to find out that takes 20 years?" Wallace said he wondered.

"I'm a slow learner," Streisand told him.

His late colleague Harry Reasoner once said, "There is one thing that Mike can do better than anybody else: With an angelic smile, he can ask a question that would get anyone else smashed in the face."

Wallace said he didn't think he had an unfair advantage over his interview subjects: "The person I'm interviewing has not been subpoenaed. He's in charge of himself, and he lives with his subject matter every day. All I'm armed with is research."

Forecast: 'American Reunion,' 'Titanic 3D' Challenge 'Hunger Games'

If you make it to the movies over Easter Weekend, don't be too confused if it feels like you've been teleported back to the late 1990s. American Reunion, the fourth installment in the American Pie series (which started in 1999), is debuting at 3,192 locations, while the 3D re-release of James Cameron's blockbuster Titanic sets sail at 2,674 venues (the exact same number of theaters the movie originally opened at in December 1997). Even with these two strong entries, though, The Hunger Games has a legitimate shot at making it three-in-a-row at the top of the box office this weekend.

With over $650 million combined worldwide, the first three American Pie movies made up one of the most successful comedy series in history. Each of the movies earned over $100 million domestically, and the last two both opened north of $30 million. It has been nearly eight years since American Wedding, though, and the direct-to-video sequels haven't done a whole lot to solidify the brand over that time period.

Spy Kids: All the Time in the World and Scream 4 both tried to revive long-dormant franchises last year, and both were very unsuccessful. Those movies put the focus on new cast members, though, while American Reunion's marketing clearly emphasizes that the whole gang is back from the original movies (including those that sat out American Wedding). A high school reunion is also a logical next step for the characters, and previews indicate that even though the characters have gotten older, there are still plenty of opportunities for mischief. Because of the competitive environment, Universal is conservatively estimating an opening over $20 million, though something closer to $30 million wouldn't be surprising.

Titanic's re-release arrives nearly 100 years after the infamous ship sideswiped an iceberg and quickly sank to the bottom of the Atlantic. Ahead of the 1997 release, plenty of pundits predicted that writer-director James Cameron's mega-budget period epic about the ship would be similarly doomed, but that turned out to be about the furthest thing from the truth. After opening to over $28 million in December of that year, Titanic hung on to first place for 15 weeks in a row and ultimately closed with a then-record $600.8 million. The movie was also an international sensation, and became the first movie ever to gross over $1 billion overseas. Remarkably, the movie retained the all-time domestic, overseas and worldwide records until Cameron's next movie Avatar came out 12 years later.

In what has to be an attempt to assuage doubts about the 3D conversion, the connection with Avatar has been a noteworthy component of Titanic 3D's marketing effort. However, what Paramount has really focused on in commercials and trailers is evoking nostalgia for the original movie by presenting iconic imagery with Celine Dion's gut-wrenching tune "My Heart Will Go On" playing in the background. Audiences are clearly being encouraged to take a trip back to Titanic in whatever format they'd like to, and most theaters will have a 2D option along with the 3D one.

Among the recent wave of 3D re-releases, The Lion King fared best with a $30.2 million debut and $94.2 million total. Because Titanic is twice as long, it has little chance of matching that opening figure—Paramount is currently estimating $15 million for the three-day weekend and $20-22 million for the five-day frame. Based on its $4.7 million gross from Tuesday night and Wednesday, though, it's likely Titanic winds up slightly above those figures.

Foreign distributor 20th Century Fox is also opening the re-release day-and-date in nearly all overseas markets with the notable exceptions of China, Mexico and Brazil.

Weekend Forecast (April 6-8)
1. American Reunion - $29.5 million
2. The Hunger Games - $28.9 million (-51%)
3. Titanic 3D - $21.9 million ($29.1 million 5-day)
4. Wrath of the Titans - $13.1 million (-60%)
5. Mirror Mirror - $11.8 million (-35%)

Bar for Success
The last two American Pie movies opened to over $30 million, and with eight years of ticket price inflation there's really no excuse for American Reunion debuting much lower than that. With its three-hour-plus running time, Titanic 3D doesn't need to be quite as big, though at least $20 million for the three-day weekend should be doable.