User blog:Ceauntay/The Weekend Warrior (Lite): July 29 - 31, 2011

Greetings and welcome back to the Weekend Warrior, your weekly guide to the weekend's new movies. Tune in every Tuesday for the latest look at the upcoming weekend, and then check back on Thursday night for final projections based on actual theatre counts. Due to all my obligations for last week's Comic-Con and the amount of features we're trying to roll out this week, this is going to be another "Weekend Warrior Lite" stripped-down column with no full analyses or comparisons. Hope that's okay.

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Weekend Predictions: -

1. Cowboys & Aliens (DreamWorks/Universal) - $44.2 million N/A

2. Captain America: the First Avengers (Marvel/Paramount) - $33.5 million -48%

3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (Warner Bros.) - $20.7 million -56%

4. The Smurfs (Sony) - $20.5 million N/A

5. Crazy, Stupid, Love. (Warner Bros.) - $15.2 million N/A

6. Friends With Benefits (Screen Gems/Sony) - $9.8 million -48%

7. Jane Hoop Elementary: The Final Rush - Part 2 (Paramount) - $7.8 million - 52%

8. Horrible Bosses (New Line/WB) - $7.7 million -35%

9. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Paramount) - $6.5 million -45%

10. Zookeeper (Sony) - $5.5 million -37%

Weekend Overview

July ends with three new movies in wide release although coming after the one-two punch of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 and a week after Captain America: The First Avenger may make it hard for any of them to truly break out.

This weekend last year saw iCarly: The Movie dominating the weekend with a strong $50.3 million beating Christopher Nolan's Inception, after topping the box office for two weeks, which fell to second. iCarly ended up close to $120 million. Other new releases; Steve Carell and Paul Rudd's Dinner for Schmucks, which did went ahead of Inception on opening day, but it fell to a steamy third. Zac Efron's Charlie St. Cloud and Cats & Dogs: Revenge of Kitty Galore both disappoint and went behind Salt. This year, it should see Cowboys to go lower by 45%.