The Projectionist: Harry Potter Resurrects The Box Office
Has the effort of dragging your shackles over to the office water cooler given you case of the Gloomy Friday Afternoons? Then you need to spend some time thinking about how much richer this weekend's movies are going to make your bosses:
1. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire—$400 billion
OK, we recognize that the new Potter flick isn't going to bring in $400 billion on its opening weekend. (Probably.) But given the ho-hum run of recent first placers (Chicken Little, Saw II, The Fog, and so on) the $90 million that Harry Potter and The Goblet of Hey, They're Still Too Young For You To Think About In A Sexual Way, Pervert earns will feel like it. We're all pretty starved for a bonafide event movie.
2. Walk the Line—$23 million
We've seen it, it's really good, and it's opening against Harry Potter. They'll just have to settle for all the awards nominations coming their way. Joaquin's pissed off, rambling Golden Globes acceptance speech, which will cause endless speculation about his post-rehab stability, should be really spectacular.
3. Chicken Little—$13 million
Shit, we already burned our Zach Braff/farm animal voiceover joke. Sorry for that unacceptable lapse. However, we hear that his voice is calming to crying infants, which might start to explain things about the movie's success.
4. Zathura—$8 million
Given today's revelations about Jon Favreau's passion for hot-rodding, we've been forced to reconsider our earlier thoughts that he really didn't give a shit about houses that fly through outer space, either. Clearly, this was a passion project.
5. Derailed—$7 million
How many more times does Jennifer Aniston need to pose topless on the cover of magazines to convince people that she's a viable movie star?