Coming off a record-breaking $260 million, three-day domestic gross, studio distributors are hardly expecting New Year’s revelers to stay away from the box office this weekend.
“With the strength of this year’s product, you don’t expect everything to just go away, do you?” said Fox executive VP of distribution Chris Aronson, who predicts his studio’s 3D James Cameron hit “Avatar” to take in just under $60 million while leading the domestic box-office for a third straight weekend.
Indeed, with no new wide releases entering the marketplace, the same films that drove the box-office to record heights last weekend should once again finish strongly.
Warner’s “Sherlock Holmes,” which debuted to $62.3 million last week, the second biggest premiere ever for a film not finishing in first place, is being projected by its studio to complete this weekend’s three-day run with $40 million.
The Joel Silver-produced action film, which stars a ripped and shredded Robert Downey Jr. in the enhanced title role and Jude Law as Watson, had taken in $83.8 million through Tuesday.
And Fox is projecting family comedy “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel” to add around $37 million to a North American gross that has now passed $100.2 million.
Universal romantic comedy “It’s Complicated,” meanwhile, is being tracked to gross around $15 million over the three-day period. The $80 million Nancy Meyers film, which pairs Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep, took in $30.6 million through Tuesday.
Also predicted to finish in the top five: Warner’s “Blind Side,” which is closing in on $200 million domestically entering its seventh weekend, and Paramount awards-striver “Up in the Air,” a Jason Reitman-directed George Clooney starrer which has proven to be one of the few commercial successes of this Oscar season, now closing in on $30 million grossed.
Both films are expected to perform in the $8 million range this weekend.
The strength of these movies is expected to easily propel the domestic box office past last year’s $153.8 million New Year’s weekend total.
Notably, the coming weekend — which encompasses Jan. 1-Jan. 3 — is somehow calculated on the 2009 books.
"Somehow, somewhere along gthe wya, some genius decided that the year should go through this first weekend of the new year," Aronson noted. "Makes no sense to me."
This strange dynamic, however, does add intrigue, with both Warner and Fox battling to become the leader in terms of global market share for the year.
For its part, Warner has already locked up the domestic box-office crown, becoming the first studio in history to surpass the $2 billion benchmark amid a total North American market that surpassed $10 billion for the first time ever.
Meanwhile, with well more than $2 billion in international revenue, Fox is the foreign ticket sales leader this year.
Earlier this week, Warner seemingly trumpeted the global crown too, claiming $3.99 billion in projected worldwide movie-ticket sales this year — also an all-time record.
However, with “Avatar” and “Chipmunks 2” grinding away during this holiday week — the films grossed $18.3 million and $12.5 million on Tuesday, respectively — Fox is closing fast on the worldwide mark.
The studio earlier this week released year-end projections of a $4.07 billion finish.
Regardless of how that race shakes out for Fox, it will enter 2010 with plenty of momentum still left over for “Avatar.”
As of Tuesday, the film had grossed $726.6 million globally in just 12 days of release.
