Frankly, on the day the final "Harry Potter" film comes out, it would be shameful to enter a competition called Box Office Wizard! Predict which five movies will place in the top five of this weekend's U.S. domestic box office. It’s that easy. I will make my own predictions here and explain them to you each week to give you some sort of reference point. It's then your job to enter a comment with your top five.
This is Week #28. It’s never too late to start! The first week you predict is the first week you enter the Box Office Wizard competition. For every correct prediction each week, you earn a point. Points are cumulative. The game keeps going on and on forever and ever except we will reset everyone back to zero -- let's say -- once a year. Each week there will be at least two winners: a weekend wizard for the users who guessed the most correct and a box office wizard for the user with the most points to date. The goal is to be Box Office Wizard for as long as you can. I'll pick an end date for the year at some point and then whoever has the most becomes the year's box office wizard. Maybe by the team that happens, Player Affinity will be so wildly popular that we'll have some cool free stuff to give the Box Office Wizard of the Year. Regardless, it's worth giving a try. What do you have to lose?
Last Week's Top Five
Week #27 Wizard(s): Everyone but GamerGeek - 3 pts
Current Box Office Wizard(s): Steven C, SimonSays - 75 Pts
It's turning into an old-fashioned duel here between Simon and myself. Many of you played around with Due Date figuring Skyline could beat it, or you would've done much better. Most everyone got 3 points one way or another.
Remember, only submissions in the comment section count and they must be made by 12:00 PM SATURDAY. Check our weekly recap posting late afternoon every Monday for the box office figures of the weekend. Remember, we count the WEEKEND ACTUALS, not the ESTIMATES announced on Sundays. On 4-day weekends, only the 3-day total matters.
Here are this week's new contenders followed by my predictions.
New Contenders this Weekend
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 
The Next Three DaysOn big weekends like these (weekend before Thanksgiving, the first weekend of May, a week before Christmas), it's not usually a question of who but how much. Clearly, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Pt. 1 will be our winner. So how much? The last two films have both opened with $77 million. They also opened the second Friday in July. "Harry" returns to Thanksgiving for the first time since "Goblet of Fire" (the biggest opener of the series), plus, this is the finale. I will say $90 million as a moderate figure.
Family films always fair well the weekend before Thanksgiving, so expect smaller declines than normal for Megamind, but only because it has no family competition. You can bet parents will not be taking little ones to see "Deathly Hallows" even though the first few Potter films catered more to families.
We've also seen big openings from new releases paired up with these behemoth sequels before. Even just last year, The Blind Side opened with $34.1 million beneath "New Moon." But don't expect that from The Next Three Days. I have it just winning third place ahead of Unstoppable. We're talking $15 million vs. $12 million in my estimation.
That leaves us with Due Date, which should slide into fifth with about $7-8 million.
