It's the first weekend of 2008 and Hollywood is holding nothing back! They're presenting you with the biggest and the best to get the year started off with a great big bang!!
OK, maybe not. Actually, they're doing pretty much what they've done the last few years: toss out a lame horror movie in the hopes that you might have enough post-holiday depression to go see it.
It's a fairly recent tradition on behalf of Hollywood. In 2005 Universal dumped the abysmal White Noise in theaters, in 2006 it was Lionsgate's creepy-but-not-in-a-good way Hostel, and last year Lionsgate redoubled their efforts with Happily N'Ever After. If you're sitting there thinging "hey, that wasnt' a horror movie", you obviously didn't see it.
Prior to 2005 though, first weekends of the year didn't get a new release. It was as if Hollywood was actually taking a break and letting moviegoers catch their breaths, or at least go back and see some of their December favorites again. What could be better than starting the New Year with a fourth showing of Return of the King?
With 2008 getting underway the studios are back with another horrible horror offering, One Missed Call [Read the CB Preview]. Whether it's creepy people crawling out of televisions or ghosts communicating through static or the internet, Hollywood has beaten the "technology predicting your death" idea to a pulp. But, then again, beating things to a pulp is something Hollywood does really well. One Missed Call chucks cell phone voicemail into the supernatural techno-oracle of death arena. Will it be worth watching? I'm guessing audiences will say no.
As the single new release of the weekend I suspect it will be lucky to make number four or five. Look for National Treasure: Book of Secrets [Read the CB Review], Alvin and the Chipmunks [Read the CB Review] and I Am Legend [Read the CB Review] to cling to the top spots for one more glorious weekend. In fact, National Treasure has a chance at garnering the highest grossing first weekend of the year ever. All it has to do is top the $28.5 million Meet the Fockers made in 2005. As an added bit of trivia, Fockers was in it's third weekend when it set that completely insignificant record, as will be National Treasure.
Amidst all the NFL wild card play off games this weekend comes another wild card entry: Juno. The little indie comedy that could has enjoyed tremendous success over the last few weeks, slowly moving up the chart as it has expanded into more and more venues. This weekend it hits wide-release proportions with nearly 2000 screens. However, like so many movies that try this sort of staggered release, I expect it to falter a bit. Most people who want to see it, or frankly even know anything about it, have already caught it during the limited release run. There's a chance it might enjoy the lack of any interesting new releases and snag some theater-goers as they enter the cinema, but I doubt it.
