Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, based on the beloved children’s book, stormed its way to #1 collecting $30.3M. This was higher than most industry predictions but right on target with my $30M prediction. Thanks to terrific marketing and higher ticket prices for 3-D showings, Meatballs now ranks as the third biggest opening in the normally slow month of September behind 2002’s Sweet Home Alabama ($35.6M) and 1998’s Rush Hour ($33M). The film is receiving fantastic reviews and with no new competition on the way for quite a few weeks, Cloudy should easily make it to $100M. The only bump in the road is when the Toy Story 3-D double feature opens up October 2^nd. 

Opening in second place was The Informant! starring Matt Damon with $10.5M, very close to my $10M call. Not a great start for this film, but reviews have generally been positive and with the right word of mouth, The Informant! could become a small sleeper hit. If anything, the poor debut of this film gives Hollywood another chance to crow about how the adult drama is dead at the box office. They may be right to a certain extent but I stand by what I said last weekend while predicting this film’s performance… No one wants to see a pudgy Matt Damon.

Romantic drama, Love Happens, starring Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart opened in fourth place with $8.1M, in line with my $8M forecast. The film didn’t really stand much of a chance for a few reasons. It isn’t based on a best-selling novel, has no appeal outside of its key demographic of adult women and was not reviewed for critics. It also doesn’t help that Eckhart isn’t really a box office draw. Love may happen to find its way to about $25M.

I know Megan Fox is incredibly hot, but I knew since I saw the trailer that Jennifer’s Body was going to bomb. Most experts thought Body would open to about $17M but it crashed and burned, coming in 5^th place with a measly $6.9M, lower than my really low $9M projection. Because of her omnipresence in tabloids, Fox will take a bit of a beating over the performance of this film. It will be pronounced that she is not a bankable actress and just another special effect in the Transformers films. Blah, blah, blah. Until the next film she stars in makes money and then she will be the “it” girl all over again. The truth is, if anyone in Hollywood is reading, I have the ideal role for Ms. Fox. One that is a perfect fit and will make her a big box office star. Megan Fox is the ideal choice to play Wonder Woman if they can ever get that film out of development hell. She’s perfect. Back to box office, Jennifer’s Body will probably drop by about 50% next weekend and may have a chance of collecting $15M by the end of its run. To see how the rest of my predictions fared, check out the chart below.

Be sure to come back Thursday for my predictions for this weekend’s releases; Surrogates, Pandorum and Fame.

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