by David Poland

July 21 , 2000

Ah, money.

There are four new wide release this weekend and all four should get into the Top Ten, raising the average of the bottom three of that group to nearly double what we saw last weekend. Yawn.

Pokémon is a one-weekend and out proposition. No biggie. It cost Warner Bros. almost nothing. The In Crowd was another Warner Bros. low-budget effort to bring the WB to the screen, complete with nipples. They should love and be well. Loser is going to be a bit of a disappointment to Sony, but clock is already ticking over there. I do sense that Hollow Man could be a surprise hit, but too little too late. The die is cast. The Angels await. And then there is the one really good movie of the weekend, What Lies Beneath, which is likely to be one of the leggier pictures of the summer, but not a huge opener.

The most interesting question of the weekend is whether X-Men drops 40 percent or 50 percent. The weekday numbers for the film have been better than any other film this summer, so I would tend to expect a smaller drop than a huge opening tends to foretell. On the other hand, The Spy Who Shagged Me had better weekday numbers and still fell 43 percent, so who knows?

WEEKEND GUESSTIMATES:
1. X-Men - 3101 venues - off 45 percent - $30 million
2. What Lies Beneath - 2813 venues - new - $27.8 million
3. Pokémon 2000 - 2752 venues - new - $23 million
4. Scary Movie - 3301 venues - off 40 percent - $15.7 million
5. Loser - 2016 venues - new - $13.7 million
6. The Perfect Storm - 3203 venues - off 35 percent - $11.1 million
7. The In Crowd - 1357 venues - new - $8.7 million
8. Disney's The Kid - 2343 venues - off 30 percent - $7.4 million
9. The Patriot - 2751 venues - off 40 percent - $6.4 million
10. Chicken Run - 2577 venues - off 30 percent - $5.5 million

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