This weekend moviegoers are offered 3 new releases; romantic, buddy comedy, I Love You, Man, action thriller, Knowing and spy comedy, Duplicity. These films should take up the top 3 spots at the box office, but the question is which one will find its way to the top? Let’s take a look.

Paul Rudd and Jason Segel star in I Love You, Man, the story of a man out to find the perfect best man for his upcoming nuptials. Both Rudd and Segel are coming off big comedy hits (Role Models and Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and pairing together should translate into the same comedic box office gold. Both Role Models and Sarah Marshall were rated R, as is I Love You, Man, which should appeal to the same broad audience. Role Models opened to $19.2M and Sarah Marshall opened to $17.7M and with no real competition in the comedy arena, I think this one could open a notch higher. Look for I Love You, Man to open with about $20M, enough to grab the #1 spot in the top ten.

The most schizophrenic box office star working today, Nicolas Cage, is back with another action thriller where he will attempt to save the world in the dully titled, Knowing. In this one, Mr. Cage stumbles upon a code that predicts an Armageddon type end of the world scenario and must stop it before it is too late. As I said, Cage has one hell of a crazy box office record. He either opens big with $25M+ openings (National Treasure 1 and 2, Ghost Rider) or bombs out with $10M openings or less (Next, Bangkok Dangerous), with very few in between. With the exception of Watchmen (no real threat) and Taken, there isn’t too much competition in the action field, so that should help steer this into Nicolas Cage hit territory. However Knowing and I Love You, Man definitely share some of the same audience so that could hurt Knowing a bit. Ironically, I think Knowing will be one of those rare Nicolas Cage pictures that opens in the mid range of his box office average. Look for Knowing to collect about $18.5M this weekend.

Duplicity marks the first lead role from Julia Roberts in about 5 years since 2004’s Closer also starring her co-star in Duplicity, Clive Owen. The movie is about two former spies who try to play a con game with a wealthy company and all the twists and turns along the way. This may not be a surefire box office hit for Roberts, but I think it is a pretty brilliant career move for the former Pretty Woman, showing she has the ability to play the lead in a caper film versus a romantic comedy. Roberts has been steadily steering her career away from rom-coms with supporting turns in films such as Ocean’s 11 and 12 and Charlie Wilson’s War. Owen hasn’t quite come into his own at the box office yet, but he and Julia Roberts share a great chemistry and that should help translate into box office dollars. I think Duplicity will open with about $15M and play out like a mid range sleeper hit over the weeks to come.

Among holdovers, Race to Witch Mountain has families alone to itself for one more weekend until Monsters vs. Aliens opens and should fall an understandable 45% to gross $13M. After a big tumble of 68% last weekend, expect Watchmen to level off a bit, dropping 55% to gross $8M in its third frame and bringing its total to just under the $100M mark. Last weekend’s horror entry, The Last House on the Left, opened to a respectable $14.7M and should fall about 55% to $6.4M. To see the rest of my predictions, check out the chart below.