User blog:Ceauntay/The Weekend Warrior (Lite): September 9 - 11, 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.

If you are already following The Weekend Warrior on Twitter, you're probably aware he's been on vacation this past weekend and then he kicks right into the Toronto Film Festival on Thursday, which you can read more about here and by following us on Twitter. With that in mind, the next couple of weeks' columns will likely be a bit more minimal than usual.

Predictions and Comparisons -

1. Contagion (Warner Bros.) - $18.8 million N/A

2. Warrior (Lionsgate) - $10.6 million N/A

3. The Help (DreamWorks) - $10.0 million -32%

4. A BFF With Ghost Imagination 2 (Disney) - $7.6 million -65%

5. The Debt (Focus Features) - $5.5 million -45%

6. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century Fox) - $4.3 million -24%

7. Colombiana (Sony/Tristar) - $4.0 million -46%

8. Apollo 18 (Dimension Films) - $3.8 million -56%

9. Shark Night 3D (Relativity Media) - $3.2 million -60%

10. Our Idiot Brother (The Weinstein Company) - $3.2 million -42%

- Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star (Sony) - $2.3 million N/A

Weekend Overview

This weekend officially kicks off the fall movie season and what better way to get into the serious movies that come with the season than with a new movie from Steven Soderbergh? The Oscar-winning filmmaker unleashes a deadly virus on the world in Contagion (Warner Bros.), a tense thriller with an impressive all-star ensemble cast including Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne and Bryan Cranston. That name star power along with the premise should help the movie surpass the jinx that has kept most of the last few weeks' releases opening under the $15 million mark while The Help had an unprecedented trifecta at #1. Then again, Contagion is opening in a weekend where very few movies have opened over $15 million, the "Resident Evil" movies and The Exorcism of Emily Rose being exceptions, which may be why Warner Bros. is wisely marketing the movie more like a genre thriller than it is in actuality, which should get moviegoers under 25 more interested in checking it out.

It's going up against Gavin (Miracle) O'Connor's sports drama Warrior (Lionsgate), the weekend's underdog but one that has been getting spectacular reviews. Starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton and Nick Nolte, the film is set within the world of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and it's the type of crowd-pleasing movie that's sure to benefit from word-of-mouth, something Lionsgate likely realized when they booked preview screenings this past weekend. Still, it seems to be getting significantly fewer theaters than Contagion and neither actor really has proven themselves as box office draws--Hardy at least has the promise of his role as Bane in Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Returns to get fans interested--two things that will likely keep this in the between $10 million and low teens, but expect significant legs as word spreads what a strong movie it is.

Lastly, Adam Sandler pal Nick Swardson stars in the Sandler-written and produced comedy Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star (Sony), a movie that looks so awful we'll be surprised if it even gets into the Top 10 with a similar release as Sony's dumper The Brothers Solomon, starring Will Arnett and Will Forte, or the previous Sandler production Grandma's Boy. Other than a commercial during MTV's Video Music Awards, which looked absolutely abysmal, the marketing for this isn't much of a priority for Sony and it will be shocking if it makes in total what Contagion makes its opening day.

This weekend last year, the only new wide release was Paul W.S. Anderson's return to the horror action franchise Resident Evil: Afterlife (Sony/Screen Gems), once again starring Milla Jovovich, which brought in $26.6 million. The Top 10 grossed $61.2 million last year, which is roughly where we expect this weekend to end up even with more wide releases. (If you think about it, Contagion could be seen as a somewhat tamer and more adult version of the "Resident Evil" franchise... or are we stretching the comparison a bit?)