The awareness for Bruno is extremely high; I feel like I’ve been watching the trailer since before Borat came out. The trailer is hysterical and the good thing about a raunchy film like Bruno is that you know the best bits aren’t being shown. It would be easy to look at Borat’s opening weekend and use that to project Bruno’s box office potential, but it is not quite that cut and dry. Borat burst on to the scene and took everyone by surprise and because of that film the curiosity factor may not be quite as high with Bruno. Not to mention I’m sure that there were plenty of people who were swept away by the hype of Borat, bought a ticket, despised it and will not be attending the latest Sacha Baron Cohen film.  Bruno does have a bit of controversy surrounding it because of its depiction of homosexuals and controversy always helps at the box office. The thing is that although there is smoke there is certainly no fire. Cohen is too smart to make fun of homosexuals and I’m sure that his true target is homophobes. 

Sacha Baron Cohen is now widely known due to the popularity of Borat and it seems like the laughs are a little more manufactured in Bruno because of this. The laughs in Borat came from an organic place whereas Bruno is certainly more planned and staged. Nonetheless, I’m sure the movie is brilliantly funny. As far as numbers go, Borat opened to a whopping $26.5M in only 837 theatres and on the following weekend the studio expanded to 2566 sites and grossed another  $28.3M. Due to terrific buzz and fabulous word of mouth, Borat went on to collect a total of $128.5M. Bruno will play out very much like a sequel at the box office. It is opening on nearly 2800 screens and will have plenty of upfront demand from Baron Cohen’s sizable fanbase. That being said, Bruno will open considerably higher than Borat, but in the long run will probably fall short on overall gross. Look for Bruno to sashay into theatres to the tune of $31M and end its trip down the runway with about $80M.

The only other film opening in wide release this weekend is I Love You, Beth Cooper brought to you by director Chris Columbus, the wildly successful auteur behind Home Alone (1990, $285.8M), Mrs. Doubtfire (1993, $219.2M)and the first 2 Harry Potter ($317.6M and $262M respectively) films. Unfortunately, Beth Cooper is going to fall way short of those films at the box office. The movie is about a geeky valedictorian who professes his love for popular girl, Beth Cooper (Hayden Panettierre), during his graduation speech. Beth is touched by this and decides to give the geek and his pals the night of their lives. Cooper is just another in a long line of geek getting the girl movies and will likely play like the bastard stepson of Superbad. With no major star power look for I Love You, Beth Cooper to debut to about $5M.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs didn’t reach its full potential on its opening weekend due to interference from the 4^th of July which landed on a Saturday for the first time since 1998. Because of this and the fact that there is no new competition opening, Dinosaurs should experience a slim decline this weekend. Take a look at how some recent animated hits performed in their 2^nd weekends.

Up – 2009 – down 35%
Monsters vs. Aliens – 2009 – down 45%
WALL-E – 2008 – down 48%
Kung Fu Panda – 2008 – down 44%

Look for Ice Age to drop 35% to thaw out another $27.5M out of the box office. 

Public Enemies, starring Johnny Depp as infamous bank robber, John Dillinger, will drop a reasonable 45% to steal another $13.9M out of the box office vault. To see the rest of my predictions, check out the chart below.