'Fighting' on track to win weekend Box office

After girl power drove “Hannah Montana: The Movie” and “17 Again” to strong openings the last two weekends, and with summer's popcorn season kicking off next Friday with “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” none of the four films opening this week are expected to burn up the box office.

Major studios are using this traditionally slow final weekend in April to try to generate some business for a quartet of modestly budgeted movies that target different audiences and would easily get overlooked against bigger competition.

All are expected gross in the high single-digit millions to mid-teens.

But Warner Bros.’ “17 Again” could compete for the No. 1 spot if it doesn’t take a huge fall. Box office followers will also be watching Universal’s “State of Play” to see whether the Russell Crowe drama displays any staying power after a soft opening weekend.

Among new pictures, underground brawling movie “Fighting,” which stars up-and-comer Channing Tatum alongside Terrence Howard, might have the best shot to break out. Though the similarly themed “Never Back Down” opened to just $8.6 million last year, tracking indicates that Tatum might help the film exceed that mark by drawing some young women along with the core audience of young guys who enjoy seeing dudes pummel each other.

“Fighting” is the first evidence of a big bet that Hollywood is placing on Tatum’s star power since he broke out in 2006’s “Step Up.” The young actor, whose image is front and center in most of the film’s ads, next stars as Duke in Paramount’s big screen version of “G.I. Joe” in August.

Universal Pictures is distributing “Fighting” for Rogue, the "genre" label that it sold for about $150 million to Ryan Kavanaugh's Relativity Media in January.

Another genre label, Sony’s Screen Gems, could compete for the top spot with “Obsessed,” which will draw a predominantly female and African-American audience. Star Beyonce Knowles is expected to be the main draw, though it also represents the highest- profile American film role yet for Idris Elba, who drew attention on HBO’s “The Wire” and more recently has been seen on “The Office.” The film, which cost $20 million, will likely open right alongside "Fighting" in the mid-teens.

“The Soloist,” based on the book by Times columnist Steve Lopez about his relationship with a brilliant but mentally ill musician, has the difficult challenge of drawing middle-aged moviegoers, who so far this year haven’t come out much for films targeted at them like “State of Play” and “Duplicity.” Tracking indicates that it will be another nail in the coffin for adult dramas, as only optimistic estimates have it even breaking $10 million in ticket sales.

Originally scheduled to come out last fall for Academy Awards consideration, “The Soloist” was pushed back to this spring due in part to the departure of DreamWorks Studios’ principals from Paramount Pictures. Their messy split left “The Soloist,” which was produced by DreamWorks, in the hands of Paramount, which wanted to cut costs and focus its Oscar promotion campaign on “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” and “Revolutionary Road.”

The weekend’s fourth film is the first from Walt Disney Studios’ new environmental-themed label DisneyNature. “Earth” is a documentary made up of recycled footage from the BBC and Discovery Channel’s 11 hour miniseries “Planet Earth.”

It opened Wednesday to a solid $4 million, making it an easy first place for the day, and is likely to draw families as well as school groups. Weekend ticket sales probably will be in the single-digit millions, but it could reach low- to mid-teens when Wednesday and Thursday are thrown into the bag.

In limited release, Sony Pictures Classics is opening James Toback’s documentary “Tyson,” about the troubled boxer, at seven theaters in Los Angeles and four in New York City.

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