Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs will dominate this frame and no other film will come close to out-performing it. The marketing for this film has been tremendous and awareness is high; my kids have been asking me to take them to see it since May. Based on the beloved children’s book by Judi Barrett, Meatballs is about an inventor who creates a machine that makes food fall from the sky in an effort to solve world hunger. The film looks great and the early reviews have all been fabulous. Cloudy is the first must see kids movie in quite a few weeks, the last being G-Force which was released at the end of July. A few kiddie flicks such as Shorts, Ponyo and Aliens in the Attic have come out since Force, but none of them excited youngsters and all disappeared quickly from theatres. 

Meatballs also has the added benefit of higher ticket prices for 3-D showings and IMAX venues. G-Force opened with $31.7M and although it had the benefit of playing when kids were off from school, it entered a way more crowded marketplace. I’m sure some parents needed a break from theatres (I did) after taking their kids to see Up, Night at the Museum 2, Ice Age 3, not to mention Harry Potter and Star Trek. I predict that money will be falling out of the sky this weekend as Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs cooks up a delicious $30M debut.

In Jennifer’s Body, Megan Fox plays a possessed cheerleader who begins to murder all the boys in school. Can Megan Fox open a movie? I don’t think anyone could open this movie. In fact if this movie does well at all, it’s solely because of Fox. The film looks to be beyond terrible and so far all of the reviews have been downright awful. Horror fans already proved last weekend that they will not come out to support garbage when they roundly rejected Sorority Row and Whiteout. Hell, even Halloween 2 performed poorly compared to the first. Jennifer will outperform Row and Whiteout by a good margin, but it’s still not going to be a big hit.  Only because of how hot Megan Fox is, Jennifer’s Body will slash its way to about $9M this weekend. 

Love Happens stars Aaron Eckhart as a widower who becomes a self-help guru after writing a best-selling book about coping with loss. He meets Jennifer Aniston at one of his seminars and as he pursues her, he realizes that he hasn’t finished grieving over his wife. The box office chances of this film falls squarely on Aniston’s shoulders. Her last 3 films, cleaned up at the box office, but Love Happens doesn’t have the buzz going for it that those three did. The Break Up ($39.2M opening) sold itself as an uproarious comedy (it wasn’t) and co-starred Vince Vaughn, hot off of Wedding Crashers. There was also a huge curiosity factor involved, because at the time, the two stars were dating. Marley & Me ($36.4M opening) was based on a best-selling novel and co-starred a dog. The current trend is that films that are about dogs kick ass at the box office. Just ask Bolt or Beverly Hills Chihuahua. He’s Just Not That Into You ($27.8M opening) had a huge, buzz worthy cast, was inspired by the best-selling self-help book and was wisely positioned to open near Valentine’s Day. Love Happens cannot boast any of these things. Aaron Eckhart is not box office draw and the film isn’t based on any hit property. Love Happens will have a modest debut, grossing about $8M.

The last new release for the weekend is The Informant! starring Matt Damon and directed by Steven Soderbergh. Based on a true story, Damon plays Mark Whitacre, a vice president of a big corporation who becomes an informant for the government to help them take down the company. Damon packed on quite a few pounds for this role and sports a really dorky mustache and in my opinion, no one wants to see a pudgy, nerdy Matt Damon. The film is receiving mostly positive reviews but doesn’t seem to have a rush out and see it kind of quality. The Informant! is going to have to rely on strong word of mouth in the weeks ahead and will have to settle for a $10M debut frame. 

Among holdovers, Tyler Perry’s I Can Do Bad All By Myself had a great debut frame that was front loaded with the filmmakers target audience of African-American women. Perry’s films tend to drop an average of 56% in their second weekends and Bad won’t be any different. Bad will drop about 56% to collect another $10.3M for the frame. To see the rest of my predictions, check out the chart below.

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