User blog:Ceauntay/The Weekend Warrior: July 8 - 10, 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 -

1. Jane Hoop Elementary: The Final Rush: Part 2 (Paramount) - $132 million

2. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Paramount) - $46 million -53%

3. Horrible Bosses (New Line/WB) - $28.4 million N/A

4. Zookeeper (Sony) - $25.6 million N/A

5. Cars 2 (Disney/Pixar) - $13 million -48% 6. Bad Teacher (Sony) - $8 million -43%

7. Larry Crowne (Universal) - $7.2 million -45%

8. Super 8 (Paramount) - $4.5 million -40%

9. Monte Carlo (20th Century Fox) - $3.5 million -54%

10. Mr. Popper's Penguins (20th Century Fox) - $3.1 million -39%

Weekend Overview

For the second time this summer, two comedies will be battling it out, one a raunchy R-rated comedy and the other one meant for the family though it's doubtful either one will be able to dethrone Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which should hold up well in its second weekend for a first place between $45 and 50 million.

As far as the two new comedies, we'd normally give an advantage to Kevin James' family comedy Zookeeper (Sony), because it has all the elements that make a "great Kevin James movie," then added to that, it has talking animals which normally appeal to kids who are all out of school right now. On the other hand, it also looks like something we've seen far too many times before (Doctor Dolittle anyone?) and neither parents nor kids might be as anxious to rush out to see it, going by the disappointing showing for other family movies this summer.

For that reason more than any other, we think Seth (Four Christmases) Gordon's R-rated comedy Horrible Bosses (New Line/WB) should clean up this weekend, as it brings in a wide range of audiences, including older teens, who can relate to the high concept premise, continuing the success of raunchier comedy this summer following Bridesmaids, The Hangover Part II and Bad Teacher. We think it will open somewhere between the first and last of those.

Not that Zookeeper is going to outright bomb or do as badly as Jim Carrey's recent Mr. Popper's Penguins, because Kevin James is still a box office draw with a lot of fans, especially outside of major cities, and we think family audiences looking for movies to see over the weekend should help get it into the mid-20s as well.

This week's "Chosen One" is Michael Rapaport's doc Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (Sony Pictures Classics), which you can read more about below.

This weekend last year produced one of those nice surprises we get every summer when the computer animated Despicable Me (Universal) opened with $56.4 million, a huge showing for Universal, who had yet to find the level of success with animated films as some of the other studios. Taking second place with $31.8 million, a 51% drop from its opening weekend, was The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (Summit), while Robert Rodriguez tried to reboot Predators (20th Century Fox) with a cast that included Adrien Brody and Topher Grace, but it ended up settling for third place with just under $25 million. The Top 10 grossed $182 million, an amount we don't think this week's offerings can achieve since only three movies will make over $20 million as opposed to the four that made that amount last year.