Thrillers chasing skaters at becalmed box office
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Consider this weekend at the box office a kind of last call before the bar closes.
Summer blockbuster season is fast approaching — “Spider-Man 3” comes out on May 4 — and then the competition for screens will become intense. Hollywood is taking advantage of the lull to drop a lot of midrange movies into the marketplace.
Five new wide releases enter the fray on Friday, but only two — the dueling thrillers “Perfect Stranger” and “Disturbia” — seem to have a chance of ending the two-week reign of the Will Ferrell comedy “Blades of Glory,” which made $22 million last weekend.
“Stranger” boasts the starriest cast of the weekend. Halle Berry plays a reporter who goes undercover to investigate an ad exec ( Bruce Willis) whom she suspects is guilty of murder. The last time the Oscar-winning Berry ventured into suspense waters, the result was 2003’s “Gothika,” which bowed to $19 million. Given all the competition, “Stranger” probably won’t hit that mark but will be looking to achieve $15 million or better. James Foley (“Glengarry Glen Ross”) directed the R-rated Columbia film, which is targeting older audiences.
“Disturbia,” a teenage riff on “Rear Window,” stars Shia LaBeouf as an angry kid under house arrest who suspects that one of his neighbors ( David Morse) is a murderer. With a PG-13 rating, the Paramount Pictures release, directed by D.J. Caruso (“The Salton Sea”), is looking to lure teens, and should open somewhere around the $15 million mark as well.
The rest of the new arrivals are expected to battle it out below the $10 million mark, some of them significantly below.
“Redline” stars Nathan Phillips (“Wolf Creek”) and Nadia Bjorlin in a series of car chases. The film’s financier, real estate mogul and high-end auto aficionado Daniel Sadek, is distributing the PG-13 release himself, a risky move.
20th Century Fox is serving up “Pathfinder,” an R-rated Vikings-and-Indians movie starring Karl Urban.
Lionsgate is chasing after moviegoers with the R-rated, urban-themed “Slow Burn,” in which D.A. Ray Liotta faces off against gang leader LL Cool J.
For sheer novelty, there is First Look Pictures’ launch of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters.” The R-rated animated movie about fast-food friends Master Shake, Frylock and Meatwad is a spinoff of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim series. It’s sure to have some cult appeal, which could allow it to trump some of the surrounding movies.
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