Tim Burton, Mia Wasikowska on the Alice in Wonderland set (top); Gerard Butler, Jennifer Aniston in The Bounty Hunter (middle); Jude Law, Forest Whitaker in Repo Men (bottom)
Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland will continue to dominate the North American box office on its third weekend. Considering that it's basically a "children's film," grosses should go up noticeably especially on Saturday and Sunday. That's the usual pattern for films geared toward kids. Last week, following a solid but hardly record-breaking Friday, Alice in Wonderland did extraordinary business on the weekend proper, adding nearly $63 million to the fantasy adventure's box-office take.
This weekend, Nicole Sperling says at Entertainment Weekly that Alice in Wonderland's revenues will likely hover around $35 million, or a decrease of slightly less than 50 percent from a week ago. If so, Burton's most successful film to date (not accounting for inflation or higher 3D/IMAX prices) will probably cross the $300 million mark next weekend.
New entries this weekend include the Jennifer Aniston-Gerard Butler comedy The Bounty Hunter, which is expected to gross around $20 million despite poor reviews; Thor Freudenthal's kiddie flick Diary of a Wimpy Kid, based on Jeff Kinney's bestseller, with a predicted $15 million; and the Jude Law-Forest Whitaker thriller Repo Men, which should bring in around $10 million — not a great beginning, even for a movie that cost a relatively modest $30 million.
Opening in limited release are the Kristen Stewart-Dakota Fanning rock biopic The Runaways, which has earned its lead actresses quite a bit of praise; the international Swedish blockbuster The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a crime-horror drama along the lines of The Silence of the Lambs (curiously, Stewart has been mentioned for the American remake); and Noah Baumbach's well-received Greenberg, with Ben Stiller.
Last weekend, studio predictions were somewhat low for Alice in Wonderland and too high for both Matt Damon's Green Zone and Robert Pattinson's Remember Me.
Photos: Alice in Wonderland (Leah Gallo / Disney Enterprises); The Bounty Hunter (Barry Wetcher / Columbia Pictures); Repo Men (Universal Pictures)