Friday, December 05, 2014

Box Office Preview: "Mock I" Set To Continue Run

This weekend there's only one new wide release to greet you if you trek out to the Cineplex. Thus--the start to the two film adaptation of the last book in author Suzanne Collins' trilogy-The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I (reviews) is expected to win for a third week.

 

The horror pic The Pyramid (reviews) follows  a team of U.S. archaeologists that unearths an ancient pyramid buried deep beneath the Egyptian desert. As they search the its depths, they become hopelessly lost in its dark and endless catacombs. Searching for a way out, they become desperate to seek daylight again. Soon they come to realize they aren't just trapped, they are being hunted.

and wrote the script from which directed.

The film adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's memoir called Wild (reviews) begins its limited bow.

The story follows a woman (Reese Witherspoon) who falls into reckless and destructive behavior following her own divorce and the death of her mother. She makes a rash decision - to hike more than 1,000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, alone. In the process she reclaims her life.

Based on neuroscientist and author Lisa Genova's debut novel--Still Alice (reviews) follows Alice Howland (Julianne Moore), a fiercely independent 50-year-old Harvard University psychology professor at the height of her career. She soon begins to notice lapses in her memory and receives a diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's Disease She soon must come to terms with it and the ways in which it will change her life.


The comedy Life Partners (reviews) follows co-dependent friendship between two very different girls — type-A Paige (Gillian Jacobs) and lesbian slacker Sasha (Leighton Meester). Paige has vowed that she won’t get married until Sasha has the same legal right and that works out fine until Paige meets Tim (Adam Brody), a young and charming doctor.

Susanna Fogel co-wrote the script with from which Fogel directed.

Pamela McClintock of THR:

Per usual, the December box office will ring in with a whimper as Hollywood studios take a break before the Christmas crush.

With no new wide releases this weekend, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 is poised to stay at No. 1 for the third consecutive weekend with, a weekend take in the $20 million-$25 million range for a domestic total north of $250 million.

There is, however, action at the specialty box office, where Jean-Marc Vallee's Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon, opens Wednesday in New York and Los Angeles. On Friday, the drama, based on Cheryl Strayed's memoir of hiking more than 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, opens in five additional cities (San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, Phoenix and Washington D.C.).

And 20th Century Fox rolls out the found-footage horror pic The Pyramid in 500 theaters. Directed by Gregory Levasseur, the movie stars Ashley Hinshaw, Denis O'Hare, James Buckley and Daniel Amerman as a group of archeologists who discover a vast pyramid buried under the Egyptian desert.

After Mockingjay, DreamWorks Animation and Fox's Penguins of Madagascar should place No. 2 in its sophomore outing. New Line's Horrible Bosses 2 hopes to improve its standing, but could stay at No. 5 behind Big Hero 6 and Interstellar.

The action heats up at the box office on Dec. 12, when Ridley Scott's biblical epic Exodus: Gods and Kings hits theaters, followed on Dec. 17 by Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, and on Dec. 19 by Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb and Annie. A slew of films then open on Christmas Day, including Into the Woods and Unbroken.

Hollywood is hoping for a bountiful holiday season after a troubled November, with revenue falling more than 9 percent over November 2013.

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