'Life as We Know It' outraces 'Secretariat'

By Sarah Sluis

Over 100 million people in the U.S. use Facebook, so it's no wonder that The Social Network landed in first place for the second week, adding another $15.5 million to its two-week total of $46 million. The David Fincher-directed drama dipped just 30%, showing impressive holding power due in part to interested older audiences.

The Katherine Heigl-led romantic comedy Life as We Know It landed in second place with $14.6 million, beating the Disney feel-good horse film, Secretariat, which finished a place below with $12.6 million. Secretariat played well among heartland audiences, but Disney was hoping for a success along the lines of Warner Bros.' The Blind Side, which opened to $34 million and finished its run with seven times that amount, $255 million. Disney's new marketing chief M.T. Carney spoke out on the soft opening, hinting that strong Internet buzz may not have reached the non-urban audiences.

Wes Craven's high school serial killer movie, My Soul to Take, accrued just $6.9 million over the weekend, even with the majority of the screens showing the horror film in 3D.

It's Kind of a Funny Story finished in twelfth place with $2 million. Though outside of the top ten, the slightly edgy romance/comedy had a better per-screen average ($2,700) than many of the films in the top ten because of its low screen count (742 screens).

A number of specialty releases posted per-screen averages above $10,000. Sony Pictures Classics limited The Inside Job's release to just two screens, boosting the per-screen average of the financial crisis documentary to $21,000 per screen, the highest of the week. The star power of Robert De Niro and Edward Norton undoubtedly helped push Stone to a $12,000 per-screen average on six screens. The John Lennon coming-of-age tale Nowhere Boy posted a $14,000 per-screen average on four screens.

Buried posted the biggest gain among specialty releases, rising 105% as it more than doubled the amount of screens in release. Never Let Me Go, which had languished last week, rose 87% as it quadrupled the number of theatres showing the picture. Waiting for "Superman" went up 55% in its third week, crossing the $1 million mark, and Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger added 31% for a three-week total of $873,000.

On Friday, Helen Mirren stars as a spy/assassin in Red, which centers on aging CIA agents, and connoisseurs of physical comedy can rejoice in the exploits featured in Jackass 3D.

'Secretariat' races against 'Life as We Know It,' 'My Soul to Take'

By Sarah Sluis

As The Social Network heads into its second week, it will receive tough competition from Life As We Know It, Secretariat, and My Soul to Take.

Life as We Know It (3,150 theatres) is a pretty typical romantic comedy, with such tepid reactions as "formulaic but intermittently charming" (Maitland McDonagh, FJI) and "well made for its corporate type" (Stephen Holden, New York Times). Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel star as antagonists forced to live with each other after they are named parents to a deceased couple's child. I'll bet a hundred bucks they fall in love! Despite the so-called image problem of Katherine Heigl, this comedy is the frontrunner of the weekend, if it can best the high teen millions number expected for second-weeker The Social Network.

Secretariat (3,072 theatres) may just be the dark horse this weekend. Though it's not tracking as well as Life as We Know It, its expected audience of Christians, older viewers, and families are not the kind of people that check out movies every weekend. Diane Lane stars as a housewife who leads a racehorse to the Triple Crown. Both Secretariat and Life as We Know It held sneak previews last Saturday, which could help boost the word-of-mouth buzz for opening weekend.

Wes Craven returns with My Soul to Take (2,572 theatres), a 3D serial killer film centering on a group of teenagers. Though the story rarely deviates from horror-movie expectations, it's well-made, suspenseful, and will offer particular appeal to younger viewers--if they can get past the R rating. Though two horror movies opened last weekend (Case 39 and Let Me In), each grossed just $5 million and shouldn't threaten the debut of My Soul to Take, which is projected to clear the $10 million mark.

The kid-in-a-mental-hospital comedy It's Kind of a Funny Story will open in 742 theatres, a number Focus chose due to positive responses among test audiences. I've been fearing this movie would flop like Charlie Bartlett, which opened to just $1.8 million after audiences failed to spark to its tale of a prescription drug-selling prepster trying to fit in. However, the popularity of stars Zach Galifianakis and Emma Roberts could make this move a more mainstream pick.

Tomorrow is John Lennon's birthday, and today audiences can catch Nowhere Boy (4 theatres), the story of Lennon as a teen. Critic Maitland McDonagh praised the coming-of-age story, but noted that "fans stand to be disappointed by the absence of band lore," with a few notable exceptions (e.g. a gate marked "Strawberry Fields")

Also in the mix is Stone (6 theatres), a cerebral thriller centering on a parole officer (Robert De Niro), a prisoner (Edward Norton), and the two's mutual relationship with the prisoner's wife (Milla Jovovich). The drama will be Overture's last release. Finally, the financial documentary The Inside Job (2 theatres) uncovers dirt on traders and their risky, thrill-seeking behavior inside and outside the office.

On Monday, the weekend race is over and the results will be in for the movie debuts featuring the following subjects: a prizewinning horse, teenagers in psych wards, couples bonding over baby poop and teenagers at the mercy of a serial killer.

Friendly competition between 'The Social Network,' 'Let Me In'

By Sarah Sluis

Led by a press barrage and endless speculation on the film's awards prospects and accuracy, The Social Network will hit 2,771 theatres and, some say, earn in the high $20 million range. The semi-biographical movie follows the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), from his Harvard days to his

company's growth in Silicon Valley. Critic Dana Stevens at Slate exclaimed, "What a joy to sit in a theater and be engaged, surprised, challenged, amused." Under the direction of David Fincher and with the verbal stylings of Aaron Sorkin, the movie is a "social satire, a miniaturist comedy of manners, and a Greek tragedy; it bites off a lot, at times more than it can chew. But even the unmasticated morsels are pretty tasty."

A remake of the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, Let Me In will bow in 2,020 theatres. While many Hollywood remakes of foreign films aren't treated very kindly by critics,

this vampire horror film has gotten props from reviewers who applauded its consistency, if not its originality. "Not only does it refrain from softening or dumbing down the story of a persecuted youngster who finds his soul mate in a vampire," critic Maitland McDonagh praises, "it incorporates additional material taken from John Ajvide Lindqvist's deeply disturbing source novel." It seems director Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) borrowed something good and, harder, kept it good.

The much-delayed Case 39 (2,211 theatres) starring Renee Zellweger will go head-to-head with Let Me In. Both films have been tracking in the $10 million range, and with slightly different

audiences--Case 39 has been attracting Hispanic audiences while arthouse lovers want to catch the foreign vampire film remake. Interestingly, the two films center on innocent/violent girls. In Let Me In, a boy befriends a vampire girl, while in Case 39 Zellweger adopts a girl who turns out to be evil.

After being available on iTunes for almost a month, Freakonomics will hit 20 theatres. If the documentary performs well, it will quell fears that opening multiple windows diminishes, not intensifies, box-office returns. Critic Ethan Alter found the film uneven, with some segments stronger than others.

Two of next week's films, romantic comedy Life as We Know It and feel-good horse racing film Secretariat, will offer sneak peeks on Saturday in roughly 800 theatres, hoping to get a leg up on positive word-of-mouth. Studios don't always release the earnings from these sneaks, but they could tip the scales during their openings next Friday.

On Monday, I'll circle back to see The Social Network's impact on returning films such as Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps and The Town, and see which horror-thriller, Case 39 or Let Me In, lured more audiences.

TV stars flock to the big screen

By Sarah Sluis

Where better to draw supporting cast members from than some of the hottest televisions shows? Christina Hendricks, known as the voluptuous head secretary Joan Holloway in AMC's "Mad Men," signed on to Life as We Know It, a romance-drama that will start filming this fall. Katherine Heigl (who herself rose to fame through "Grey's Anatomy") will star with Josh Duhamel. The movie follows a romance that develops between Heigl and Duhamel when they are named caregivers of their friends' children when the couple dies in a car accident. Because Hendricks is playing the mutual best friend of Heigl and Duhamel, chances are she'll be playing the dead wife, which means we'll mainly be seeing her before or in flashbacks.

Blake Lively from "Gossip Girl" is joining actor/director Ben Affleck's production The Town. The crime thriller, an adaptation of the novel Prince of Thieves, will center on Affleck but has assembled a big supporting cast, including another actor from "Mad Men," Jon Hamm, a.k.a. Don Draper. Lively will play Affleck's ex-girlfriend, who is also the sister of a member of his gang (Jeremy Renner). The production also starts filming this fall, so both of these projects should appear on the silver screen sometime in 2010.

I remember seeing Blake Lively in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and thinking, this girl is jumping off the screen. Within the ensemble cast, which included already established stars like Alexis Bledel ("Gilmore Girls") and America Ferrera (Real Women Have Curves), she stood out with effortless charisma. There was no doubt in my mind she was going to be cast in some big project. She made a few lackluster films, and has since achieved fame as the star of "Gossip Girls." I'm pleased that she has been cast in this role, as I suspect she has some deeper acting talent that's just waiting for the right role. Likewise, Christina Hendricks has worked almost exclusively--and regularly--in television for the past decade, including roles in niche favorites like "Firefly" and "Undressed." While both of these women are A-listers in (my) television world, these supporting roles could lead to a starring project that I'd happily buy a ticket to.