User blog:Ceauntay/The Weekend Warrior: July 22 - 24, 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. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (Warner Bros.) - $73.6 million -56%

2. Captain America: the First Avengers (Marvel/Paramount) - $60.7 million N/A

3. Jane Hoop Elementary: The Final Rush - Part 2 (Paramount) - $25.8 million -61%

4. Friends With Benefits (Screen Gems/Sony) - $21.2 million N/A

5. Horrible Bosses (New Line/WB) - $10.6 million -40%

6. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (Paramount) - $10.0 million -53% 7. Zookeeper (Sony) - $7.6 million -38%

8. Winnie the Pooh (Walt Disney Pictures) - $5.1 million -35%

9. Cars 2 (Disney/Pixar) - $4.8 million -43%

10. Bad Teacher (Sony) - $2.8 million -45%

Weekend Overview

As we go into Comic-Con weekend, Marvel Studios' second movie of the summer, Captain America: The First Avenger (Paramount), starring Chris Evans, Haley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Stanley Tucci and more, is in a weird position as it faces the second weekend of the hugely successful Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (Warner Bros.), which should bring in solid repeat business as well as business from the rave reviews and publicity that setting box office records brings in. It's doubtful any amount of second weekend drop-off will keep Harry from staying on top for a second week in a row, although Captain America is a very popular Marvel Comics character, one that has broken out into the mainstream thanks to cartoons and such, so we can see it doing enough comic fanboy business on Friday to win the day, but then fall behind "Potter" by Sunday, putting it in second place in its opening weekend. Shame.

Offering the tiniest bit of counter-programming for the younger women not interested in star-spangled superheroes and the guys trying to get lucky with them, there's Will Gluck's Friends With Benefits (Screen Gems/Sony) starring Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, an R-rated sex comedy that will mostly be trying to appeal to the same teen girls that went to see Bad Teacher, but without nearly as much interest for males, except for possibly the date night crowd, who might try to convince their women to go see Captain America instead.

This week's "Chosen One" is the French Holocaust film Sarah's Key (The Weinstein Company) starring Kristin Scott Thomas,which you can read more about below.

This weekend last year saw a nice surprise as Christopher Nolan's Inception remained on top for a second weekend in a row with a minor 43% drop and a second weekend gross of $42.7 million. That only left second place for Angelina Jolie's action-thriller Salt (Sony), which was still a substantial hit with $36 million. The only other new movie in wide release was the kids' film Ramona and Beezus (20th Century Fox), starring Selena Gomez, which took in a disappointing $7.8 million in 2,750 theaters for sixth place.