User blog:Ceauntay/The Weekend Warrior: May 27 - 30, 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.

If you aren't doing so already, you can follow The Weekend Warrior on Twitter where he talks about box office, movies, music, comic books and all sorts of random things.

Predictions and Comparisons -

(All the predictions below are for the four-day weekend)

1. The Hangover Part II (Warner Bros.) - $94.6 million N/A ($21 million on Thursday)

2. Kung Fu Panda 2 (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) - $82.5 million N/A ($9.6 million on Thursday)

3. True Jackson, VP: The Movie (Paramount/Nickelodeon Movies) - $75.1 million N/A ($16 million on Thursday)

4. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Walt Disney Pictures) - $49.0 million -54%

5. Sonic X: The Final Stand (20th Century Fox) - $29 million -60%

6. Bridesmaids (Universal) - $17.7 million -15%

7. Thor (Paramount/Marvel) - $10.0 million -35%

8. Fast Five (Universal) - $7.3 million -32%

9. Rio (20th Century Fox) - $3.3 million -30%

10. Priest (Sony/Screen Gems) - $2.7 million -44%

Weekend Overview

It's Memorial Day weekend, historically one of the busiest filmgoing periods of the year other than maybe Thanksgiving weekend. It's also the week the Weekend Warrior loathes to predict because there are usually way too many factors to consider, not only weather, but also how many people who don't normally go to theaters will flock to their neighborhood Cineplex to see two of the summer's most anticipated sequels.

While normally a kids' movie like Kung Fu Panda 2 (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) with the all-star voice cast Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, Dustin Hoffman, Seth Rogen and Jackie Chan would kill on Memorial Day weekend with school out on Monday and lots of families looking for movies to see as a group, we think that the overwhelming demand for Todd Phillips' The Hangover Part 2 (Warner Bros.) will put it over the top and allow it to win the weekend, if only by a small margin. It certainly has an advantage being that the original movie made $277 million to Kung Fu Panda's $215 million, and it also looks more like one of those events movies people will want to see as soon as possible.

The question is whether two movies can make $80 million over the four-day weekend with last week's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides still bringing in audiences. We're going to say "Yes" because we've seen three movies gross more than $120 million on their own. The last time we even came close was in 2004 when Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow took on the second weekend of Shrek 2 and both grossed over $85 million. Although the rest of the May offerings weren't nearly as strong that year, you also have to put into consideration the amount of inflation and the higher 3D ticket prices. Either way, the year started out slow but the summer is doing business like gangbusters and between higher ticket prices now than 7 years ago, we think this is going to be a huge weekend.

That said, we do think The Hangover Part II will do most of its business opening weekend while the panda should hang around for a while and gross more in the long run.

This week's "Chosen One" is Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (Fox Searchlight), which you can read more about below.

Last Memorial Day also saw a competition between two very different movies though neither of them did anywhere near what we expect from this week's offerings, nor were they able to dethrone Shrek Forever After, which won the weekend with a phenomenal $57 million four-day gross, down roughly 19% from its first week. Like this week's offerings, the sequel Sex and the City 2 (New Line/WB) opened a day early on Thursday with $14 million but then it ended making another $36 million over the four-day weekend, essentially making less in its first five days than the original movie did its opening three-day weekend. It would go on to gross less than $100 million, signaling the death knell for the former HBO series. Opening on Friday, Jerry Bruckheimer's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (Walt Disney Pictures), starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Gemma Arterton, ended up just below with $36.8 million over the four-day weekend which was not good considering the $200 million production budget. It ended up grossing $91 million domestic but $335 million worldwide, which more than made up by its weak showing domestically. The Top 10 grossed $182.4 million, one of the weakest Memorial Day showings in some time and one that should be thoroughly thrashed by Monday as this weekend may set a new record.

Read more: The Weekend Warrior: May 27 - 30 - ComingSoon.net http://www.comingsoon.net/news/weekendwarriornews.php?id=77779#ixzz1NJ7Qi7rk