The Projectionist: The Barely Good Enough Four
Hollywood implores you to leave your backyard grills to gather dust and spend the summer weekend devouring their box office bon-bons. Do so, but in this exact way:
1. Fantastic Four—$37 million
Should the movie somehow surmount its horrible buzz and bad reviews and fool enough ticket-buyers to creep into the mid-forties, Fox will immediately turn its attention to minimizing second weekend erosion in its trademark promotional style. They'll hire a fleet of hot-air balloons bearing the Fantastic Four logo to hover over the nation's largest cities, then ignite them in homage to the Human Torch. Research shows that males 18-24 really love airborne conflagration.
2. War of the Worlds—$34 million
Paramount and DreamWorks plan on using some of the proceeds from WOTW's opening-weekend take to finally shoot an ending for the movie. Of course, Spielberg will then feel the compulsion to compensate by digitally inserting a scene of cuddly ETs playing volleyball to take some of the edge off.
3. Dark Water—$15 million
Is it inappropriate to admit that the only thing we know about this movie is that it stars the freakishly beautiful Jennifer Connelly, and that single fact is more than enough to get us to the theater? We'd pay ArcLight prices to watch three minutes of grainy video of Connelly working on the NY Times Sunday crossword.
4.Batman Begins—$10 million
This might be our favorite movie of the summer, despite Katie Holmes' tragic attempts at seeming tough and principled.
5. Mr. and Mrs. Smith—$8 million
Hollywood's Golden Couple should celebrate their last week in the top five by being photographed doing something cute with Angelina's kids. We suggest a whitewater rafting spread in Us Weekly, just to keep the good times rolling.