Surrogates, starring Bruce Willis is set in a futuristic world where humans live in isolation and interact through surrogate robots. Willis plays a cop who must leave his home for the first time in years to investigate the murders of other’s surrogates. It’s a great premise for a sci-fi film in today’s technology crazy society and it should pull audiences in. The trailers have been cool and the lack of action films over the last few weeks should help Surrogates stand out in the marketplace. Of course, the box office chances of the film truly rest on the shoulders of Bruce Willis. Willis has never been a guaranteed success at the box office; for every Die Hard there is a Hudson Hawk. With the exception of the 4^th Die Hard movie, Willis’ last few leading roles have had middling success at best at the box office. Take a look.

 

Willis has had quite the varied career appearing in films across every genre there is; he’s starred in action, sci-fi, drama, animated films, comedies, romantic comedies and dramas, not to mention his various turns in independent films. He is truly a great actor and he’s managed to work across all of these genres by starring in the occasional studio action film that rakes it in at the box office. Surrogates seems like one of those projects and marks a return to Willis’ sci-fi action roots. This is actually his first sci-fi flick in over 10 years and that genre has served him especially well. 1998’s Armageddon opened with $36.1M and went on to gross $201.6M and 1997’s The Fifth Element opened with $17M on its way to $63.6M. I think Surrogates will perform much like Element and collect about $16M this weekend.

MGM tries to relaunch its popular Fame franchise this weekend, but will it learn how to fly? I don’t think so. Interest doesn’t seem to be that high and the name Fame really doesn’t mean anything to its core demographic of teenagers. None of them are old enough to remember either the movie or the TV series. If anything they might know the song from driving in the car with their moms. The one thing Fame does have going for it is that there is no movies aimed at teens currently in theatres. Nonetheless, teenage boys will be seeing Surrogates this weekend and the 3-D fun of Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs could lure away some of its potential audience as well, despite being aimed at youngsters. I’m sorry Fame, but you’re not going to live forever and hardly anyone will remember your name. Look for Fame to debut to about $10M this weekend.

The last new film of the frame is sci-fi horror flick, Pandorum, starring Dennis Quaid. The film is about two astronauts who awaken in a hyper-sleep chamber in a seemingly abandoned spacecraft. They can’t remember who they are or what their mission is, but they soon make the startling discovery that they are not alone. In other words, Pandorum is the latest film in a long line of Alien copycats. Multiplexes have been littered with horror films and R rated sci-fi like District 9 for weeks now, so Pandorum has its work cut out for it. The last three horror movies (Halloween 2, Sorority Row and Jennifer’s Body) have all fizzled at the box office. Pandorum does have the sci-fi element going for it, unfortunately Bruce Willis is going to steal away most of that audience. Pandorum will open to about $6M.

Among holdovers, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs will continue to do very well this weekend with no competition in sight and positive word of mouth bringing in more families. Will it be enough to stay at #1? Meatballs will drop about 30% to collect another $21.2M which will be more tahan enough to stay at the top of the charts. To see the rest of my predictions, check out the chart below.

Come back Monday for the results and follow me on Twitter for updates throughout the weekend.