Denzel Washington and Chris Pine star in 'Unstoppable.'

By PAUL DERGARABEDIAN

It looks like “Megamind” will be going for two in a row this weekend as the all-star animated feature from Dreamworks and Paramount fends off stalwart Robert Downey Jr. and newcomers Denzel Washington and Harrison Ford to remain on top at the nation’s theaters.

Using the box office trajectory of the similarly performing “How to Train Your Dragon” as a guide, a second weekend drop in the mid-30 percent range would give “Megamind” a chart-topping gross of around $30 million and an $80 million-plus total by the end of the weekend.

Todd Phillips’ “Due Date,” starring Downey and Zach Galifianakis, should generate revenues in the low $20 millions with a second weekend drop of around 30 percent and a total gross through Sunday of close to $75 million. The Warner Bros. film opened in second place last weekend with a solid $32.7 million but has been dominating the midweek box office derby vs. the more family-oriented and therefore weekend-friendly “Megamind.”
Read the full story

Will Ferrell voices Megamind, while Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis star in 'Due Date'.

Is Due Date set to follow the success of The Hangover – both of which were directed by Todd Phillips and star Zach Galifianakis? Or will it be eclipsed by Will Ferrell and Megamind?

Both films seem to be generating strong buzz as we begin rolling into the holiday season of movies. However, both might be reaching for some of the same audience.

Each movie will have its own base — Due Date will have the adults that loved The Hangover; Megamind will pull in the families. But both films appear to have broad comic appeal, which makes it a really good weekend for fans of the genre.

But Due Date appears to have the kind of pull that may make it at least nearly as successful as The Hangover.
Read the full story

'Hereafter', starring Matt Damon, and 'Paranormal Activity 2' open wide release this week.

This week’s race for the box office appears to be a battle of two schools of thought in movie marketing.

On the one hand, you have traditional marketing with Hereafter, the Clint Eastwood-directed film starring Matt Damon as a reluctant psychic. We’ve seen commercials on TV, trailers in theaters, ads all over, the usual stuff.

And then there’s Paranormal Activity 2, which is basically using the same sort of social-media/word-of-mouth buzz that made the first film a success. Mind you, it does have commercials on TV and in theaters, but also like the first one, these show you very little.

As a result, there’s a little bit of a battle for the top of the box office.
Read the full story

Diane Lane stars as Penny Chenery in 'Secretariat.' (Walt Disney Pictures)

This week, the battle for the box office is shaping up to be between a big horse and a little baby.

Secretariat, Disney’s biopic of the 1973 Triple Crown winner, is shaping up to win yet again, but by how many lengths. Life As We Know it, featuring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel as sudden, unwilling parents, seems to be gaining some ground.

Secretariat, much like Seabiscuit before it, appears to have the strength to hold off all challengers this weekend. Starring Diane Lane and John Malkovich, the film comes off as quite corny, but according to the social-media movie site Flixster, so far the movie’s doing well with audiences, scoring a 73-percent like rating.
Read the full story

Films out this weekend: 'Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole', 'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps' and 'You Again.'

Last week, there were four new movies battling for ticket buyers’ attention, and The Town won it. This week, there are three more — and like last week, their audiences are diverse.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole and You Again could easily split the public again. But the Wall Street sequel appears to have a clear advantage.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps – showtimes
Michael Douglas returns to arguably his most favorite role, that of fomer renegade financier Gordon Gekko, in the Wall Street sequel, which also features Shia LeBoeuf, Carey Mulligan and Josh Brolin. Men have a strong interest in this film, spread all the way down the age line, according to social-media movie website Flixster.
Read the full story

Showtimes: ‘The Town’ | ‘Easy A’
For the first time since the end of summer, we’ve got a big weekend of releases coming up, and it’s going to be tough to pick a winner, as each of the four big releases has a built-in sector of the audience.

The Town, starring and directed by Ben Affleck, is a serious crime drama; Easy A, with Emma Stone, is a high-school comedy; Devil, an M. Night Shyamalan-produced thriller, trafficks in scares and Alpha & Omega is an animated family film.

Of the four, Easy A has gained the most interest on the social-media movie website Flixster. The Town and Devil have also seen their interest rise, but though Alpha & Omega has fallen off, it has picked up interest earlier this month.
Read the full story

Ali Larter and Milla Jovovich star in 'Resident Evil: Afterlife', a 3-D horror movie.

This weekend’s lone major release, Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D, may find its way to the top of the heap for the weekend box office. But it might be a short stay.

The fourth installment of the horror franchise, which itself was born from the world of video games, Afterlife has a ton of promotional oomph behind it to keep the series’ fans interested.

It also brings together the series’ star, Milla Jovovich, with its original director, Paul W.S. Anderson.

But after this week, it might be a tough go for Afterlife. According to social-media movie site Flixster, interest levels for upcoming films are pretty high, including those for The Town, Easy A and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Approval numbers for last week’s new films were all strong — Machete was tops with a solid 77 percent score, but The American and Going the Distance also did well.

Three new films this weekend: 'Machete' with Danny Trejo, 'Going The Distance' with Drew Barrymore and 'The American' with George Clooney.

Now that theaters are in their traditional lull between the summer movie season and the slow-building holiday season, it becomes a little harder to pick which films will come out on top at the box office.

Last week, for example, Takers narrowly edged The Last Exorcism, as both movies pulled in just over $20 million. During the summer, that would’ve been a pretty rough week for any new film, but in perspective, neither film did all that badly. (The Last Exorcism has already exceeded its $1.8 million production budget.)

This week will probably be more of the same, but it is difficult to figure out which of the three major new releases will pull out in front. Each appeals to a different sector of the market, though there is an overlap between two films that might make the difference.
Read the full story

New films this week include 'Takers' with Idris Elba and 'The Last Exorcism' with Ashley Bell.

We are now way outside the summer movie season, as the most heavily hyped opening movies don’t quite have massive star power or special effects. Instead, we’ve got ensemble casts and low-budget horror.

First, there’s Takers, a caper movie with a group of pretty well-known actors, like Paul Walker from The Fast and the Furious, Idris Elba from The Wire and The Office, Hayden Christensen from the Star Wars prequels and rapper T.I. Data from social-media movie site Flixster has it ahead of The Last Exorcism in terms of interest from that site’s community.

But Exorcism, a horror film with a verite feel, may still have a pretty solid weekend, especially given its small production budget.

Neither, however, seems to have a chance of catching The Expendables, the action-packed picture that has already pulled in $72 million, according to Box Office Mojo. In fact, it might be an uphill climb for the new pictures past either Eat Pray Love or The Other Guys.

Critically speaking, The Last Exorcism is doing the best of the new films, with a 69 percent fresh score at Rotten Tomatoes. Joe Lozito of Big Picture Big Sound called it “actually clever and creepy”.

Meanwhile, Takers didn’t fare as well, only scoring a 28 percent rating. Most critics found the script cliched and the characters two-dimensional, despite the slick filmmaking.

Five films debut in wide release this weekend: 'Lottery Ticket', 'Piranha 3-D', 'Nanny McPhee Returns', 'The Switch' and 'Vampires Suck'.

First off, it looks like we can basically call the summer movie season over — instead of high-concept, high-profile releases, we’ve got a huge, varied menu of genre pictures, with the possibility none of them will overtake movies already in theaters for the box office title.

We’ll take a quick look at the success and failure stories of the summer in a little bit here, but first, let’s see which films might make a dent in the box office this weekend.

Five films make wide-release debuts this week: The Switch, a comedy about artificial insemination with Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman; Nanny McPhee Returns, a family sequel about a magical minder of bad kids featuring Emma Thompson; Lottery Ticket, an ensemble comedy starring Bow Wow and Ice Cube; Piranha 3-D, a remake of a horror cult classic about the deadly fish, and finally, Vampires Suck, a parody of the Twilight franchise.

Of the five, four are doing very well in terms of searches on Flixster, the social-media movie site. The leader here is The Switch, which is also doing well among females and is doing about 15 percent better than the similarly themed The Back-Up Plan, the Jennifer Lopez comedy from March which ended up pulling in more than $37 million according to Box Office Mojo.

After that it’s Lottery Ticket, Piranha 3-D and Nanny McPhee Returns. Despite Vampire Sucks’ Wednesday opening, it’s still behind two yet-to-be-released films, Alpha and Omega (an animated film about wolves arriving Sept. 17) and Machete (a Robert Rodriguez-helmed action picture coming Sept. 3).

(And then there’s the real bad news — all five openers are lagging behind The American, which stars George Clooney as an assassin and arrives Sept. 1.)

Now, will any of these overtake The Expendables or Eat Pray Love at the box office? Might be difficult — the film with the best chance seems to be The Switch, and even with Aniston and Bateman giving it star power, it doesn’t seem to be catching enough eyes.

Two things to consider here: At least one site, Nerve.com, loves the chances of both Piranha 3-D and Lottery Ticket. I’m going to say they’re half-right — Piranha 3-D seems to use the 3-D gimmick the way it was intended: to show danger flying right at your face. This isn’t to say Lottery Ticket won’t do well — the premise is funny enough and the cast is pretty solid across the board.

Also, of last week’s openers, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World had the most positive post-film scores from moviegoers — 82 percent positive from Flixster users, compared to 72 percent for The Expendables and 59 percent for Eat Pray Love. This may mean Scott Pilgrim could see its position (fifth last week) actually improve.

If I had to pick a top-five for the weekend, let’s go with:

1. The Expendables
2. The Switch
3. Piranha 3-D
4. Scott Pilgrim
5. Lottery Ticket

Let’s check out critical numbers now. The film with the highest score so far on Rotten Tomatoes, in a bit of an upset: Nanny McPhee Returns at 82 percent fresh, followed closely by Piranha 3-D at 80. Critics liked McPhee‘s attention to making sure this was fun for kids, while the few critics who ventured into Piranha enjoyed its tongue-planted-in-cheek attitude amid its incredible gore.

Both The Switch and Lottery Ticket scored a 37 percent rating. Critics point out that The Switch has few surprises and even less chemistry between its two stars, while Ticket is too infrequently funny and pretty much the same story as Friday or Barbershop.

Finally, there’s Vampires Suck, which scored a 0-percent fresh rating, or universally hated. Many filmmakers might be concerned with that, but this seems to be par for the course for the two directors of this film — Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who also happened to make Meet The Spartans, Disaster Movie, Epic Movie and Date Movie, all of which were similarly slammed.

• A quick summer recap: Here are a few notes on what worked and what didn’t in Summer 2010.

Biggest grossers: Toy Story 3, Iron Man 2, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Inception, Shrek Forever After.

Biggest surprise: To me, it’s Inception, not because it wasn’t a big movie — it was. No, I think a lot of people might’ve been worried that the film’s winding, convoluted plot may have been too much for summer. Not even close on that one.

Biggest flops: You’d think The Last Airbender would be here, and you’d be wrong. In fact, not really all that close — several other pictures haven’t made their production costs back so far either. The four worst offenders: Robin Hood, which pulled in $105 million for a $200 million film; Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which took in $90 million for a $200 million movie; Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, which has so far gained $37 million for its $85 million budget; and the worst flop appears to be The Sorcerer’s Apprentice — $59 million to date for a $150 million budget. The Nicolas Cage ride into movie-star hell continues.

Biggest hit: A few films did so well they took in many times their budget. Even giant Toy Story 3, which cost $200 million to make, took in $400 million-plus so far. The three best, though? In third, with a budget of $69 million and an intake of $225 million so far — Despicable Me, the French-made animated comedy with Steve Carell. The top two are so close as to call it a tie, both making more than four times their budgets. They are Eclipse, which gained $296 million for a $68 million film, and the remade, Jackie Chan-starring The Karate Kid, which has seen $174 million in revenue for its frugal $40 million budget.

(Note: All figures for movie grosses and budgets from Box Office Mojo.)