After the first two High School Musical movies premiered on TV to blazing success, Disney will launch the third movie, High School Musical 3 in theatres this weekend. This is a highly unprecedented move by the studio that is going to work, big time. High School Musical has a fervent fan base of young girls which will surely rush out to see the third chapter this weekend. There is really no other movie in recent history to compare to HSM3 and project it’s weekend gross, other that Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds 3-D, which opened in February to an impressive $31M. There are still major differences though. Hannah Montana opened in just under 700 theatres (compared to HSM3’s 3400), was billed as a one week event (Disney later expanded the run), and tickets were $15 each. That means that about 2 million tickets were sold for Hannah Montana, and I believe that HSM can double that. I would expect HSM3 to make about $40M this weekend.

This weekend’s other big sequel, Saw V, also has a fervent fan base and will perform well this weekend as well. Saw V certainly doesn’t have to worry about competition from HSM3, as their audiences couldn’t be more opposite (although I’m sure there is some crazy 10 year old girl out there who loves Jigsaw). Saw V will perform as well as its predecessors, making about $29M this weekend.

Edward Norton and Colin Farrell star in Pride & Glory as NY detectives investigating a series of cop killings. Audiences haven’t responded too well recently to crime based thrillers and this one should follow the same trend. I mean really, if the first authentic pairing of De Niro and Pacino in Righteous Kill failed to deliver a few weeks back, what chance do Norton and Farrell have? I’d look for a weekend gross of about $8M.

The only other new movie (sort of) to predict this weekend is the re-release of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. This is the third October in a row that this movie is being re-released and the other 2 times it performed rather well. With steep competition from HSM3 and Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Nightmare could still gross about $10M this weekend. For the rest of my predictions, see the chart below.