Lionsgate bows Saw IV in about 3.100 venues with the intention to blow up last weekend box office results. The movie has the chance to gross more than $30M as the previous sequels did. It’s important to mention that the latest gore movies, Hostel. Part II, Turistas and The hitcher, haven’t obtained a successful gross (each of them grossed less than $20M). However, Saw IV has more possibilities to improve these results, because we are in autumn and close to Halloween, a traditional date for horror movies. The question is whether people will prefer this kind of horror or that of 30 days of night and Nightmare before Christmas re-issue.

Different from this sort of movies, we find Dan in real life, a smart comedy by Pieces of April director Peter Hedge and starred by Steve Carrell and French actress Juliette Binoche. Disney will release this film at about 1.700 sites, looking for adult audiences, as New Line and Dreamworks did in previous weekends without success. The movie cruises to obtain about a $9-11M gross on its first weekend. The budget of the film is still unknown, but is possible that it won’t surpass 40-50 millions dollars, which means that the movie has to keep a good level of grosses during the following weekends, falling less than 35% to have some benefit.

About last week releases, I want to mention the flop movies Rendition and Things we lost on the fire. Both films will fall more than a 45%, not only for their short interest but for the very poor numbers that they are obtaining on these days. Both films will end their run on the box office with less than $15M.

In there way to make some money up, The Darjeeling limited and Lars and the real girl are set to cross into a national release adding more than 500 theaters each. To date, these movies have obtained excellent results in limited sites, and now, their distribution companies want to enlarge the number of admissions among the adult and alternative audiences.

The Darjeeling limited has grossed $4M to date in 200 theaters and, with the additions of 400 sites, the movie has the chance to earn another $2’5M more, with an average of 4.200 dollars per site. The movie final budget is $20M and that means that the movie should improve a little bit more its grosses week after week. It’s important to mention that director Wes Anderson has only one success film in his career, The Royal Tenenbaums ($52M final box office).

Lars and the real girl is a very strange movie with a surreal plot: a man who falls in love with a blow up doll. Reviews have been quite good and early grosses in limited sites have been high as well. Next weekend the movie will obtain among 2’5 or 3 million dollars in 500 theaters on this. Lars has a budget of $12M.

Pau Brunet