1.this is it-$50.9
2.paranormal activity-$18.6
3.wild things-$10.4
4.law abiding citizen-$9.7
5.couples retreat-$8.2

Paranormal Activity won with great results and Saw 6 burns out. Astro Boy and The Vampire´s Assistent are two big bombs. This weekend we have 5 horror movies in the top 10. Next Weekend: This is It wins with $235M in the first 5 days!

@connor: $50.9 for This is It?? I don't know, even without any competition that number would surprise me.

@Jonh-PT: You're predicting a larger 5 day weekend for This Is It than Transformers 2? Although there is a large number of people who are interested in Michael Jackson and his concert, this is a documentary that we are talking out that is coming out on Halloween weekend in a time period where children have to go to school and adults have to work. Heck, I'd be surprised if it cracked $60 million in its first 5 days.

@Bustray: My god i am so stupid, I want to write $135M insteed of $235M, thank you for warning.

This is It will probably win… but i don't think there's as much interest as people are expecting there to be… maybe it'll have a big wednesday? But probably just a decent weekend, $35 Million tops…also on halloween weekend i expect most people will want a good scare, I see Paranormal Activity pulling in maybe $25-30 Million next weekend for at least a solid second place if not #1 again. Could there be Oscar nominations in PA's future? if so probably only a screenplay nod, maybe sound and film editing…Saw VI won't have an increase, but it probably won't drop that much, and hey maybe Zombieland will get in on the halloween bump too? Cirque Du Freak and Astro Boy will be out of the top 10 next week.
It sucks that Wild Things is fading so fast, one of the best movies of year just didnt know how to tell people it was really a movie made for the 18-35 set and their parents.

early picks (don't hold me to them!)
1. This Is It $35 Million
2. Paranormal Activity $27 Million
3. Saw VI $11.5 Million
4. Law Abiding Citizen $10 Million
5. Where the Wild Things Are $9 Million
6. Couples Retreat $8 Million
7. Zombieland $6 Million
8. The Stepfather $5 Million
9. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs $3 Million
10. A Serious Man $2 Million

Wow. There have been more flops this year than i've seen in a hell of a long time.
I wouldn't call Saw VI a flop, becuase the most fans on are giving it positive reviews, which means if word-of-mouth continues to be good, unlike SAW V, than it's 2nd weekend won't be too bad.

So glad Paranormal Activty debuted at no. 1, i'm glad it wasn't stupid.

Speaking of stupid, if 'This Is It' breaks box-office records, i'm gonna kill myself. I know it'll ne no. 1, that's obvious, but this film doesn't derve to be a smash hit, you can see the same concert performances online for free.

Although, all that was a flop DESERVED to be a flop.

@ Matthew Wilson:
Paranormal's been out for five weeks, this was just it's biggest expansion, not it's debut.

@ JAB

I doubt PA will receive any Oscar nods… In all honesty, I didn't think the film was that great. I do think it was smartly made and marketed, and is riding one hell of a wave via word of mouth, but I don't really think the film was all that great. For what it was, amazing. But when compared to other films, I just wasn't that impressed.

With that said, this year has been HORRIBLE in my opinion, and PA is still one of the best films to come out of it… So, well, that says a whole lot. Sigh. More remakes… Yay.

@Jonh-PT: Hey, no problem. Everybody makes typing mistakes.

As for next weekend, I think that This Is It will take the top spot with around $40 million. The trailer looks amazing, and those early ticket sales are pretty impressive. However, it could be very front loaded toward Wednesday/Thursday, which is when all the die-hard Jackson fans will come out. However, I think there will be enough people interested to propel it past a 10k per theater average come the weekend. The holdovers should do fairly well due to lack of competition, and box office receipts should definitely be up from last years meager halloween weekend gross of just under $75 million. Early predics:

1. This Is It- $39 million
2. Paranormal Activity- $13 million
3. Law Abiding Citizen- $8.5 million
4. Where The Wild Things Are- $8 million
5. Couple's Retreat- $7 million

Next week:

This is It (32)
Paranormal Activity (26)
Saw VI (13)
Where the Wild Things Are (12)
Law Abiding Citizen (11)
Couples Retreat (11)
The Stepfather (9)
Astro Boy (8)
Zombieland (7)
Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (4)
A Serious Man (2)

Nialed it dude.

Hey, I'd put up This is It at the $40M range for the weekend, $18Mil on its opening day

Paranormal will lose its steam a bit, as it has already been abundant for at least 2 weeks, so lets just give it $18M.

Everything else will fall less than 50% due to lack of new openings, yes, I think WTWTA and Saw VI will have a less steeper decline…

I don't think Saw will be able to go back to $30mil openings. Their grosses were falling gradually as it was; now that Saw VI only made $14.8mil its opening weekend, it can't go back. If you watch the films (and I watched I-IV), you'll see they really build on each other, and if you aren't very familiar with the previous ones, the latest ones won't make sense. So if not a whole lot of people went to see Saw VI, then fewer will see Saw VII.

I'm happy for PA. I predicted a bit high for it, but only just. I had it in #2, though; I figured Saw VI would gross higher.

I wanted to watch "Where the Wild Things Are" this weekend with my little sister, but she'd already seen it and she didn't want to watch it again, so we ended up going to "Cloudy." I was pleasantly surprised (though not too surprised, because I knew it had good reviews). But now I'm absolutely dying to see "Wild Things," and I'm back up at college where it's harder to obtain a car and drive to the theater, AND I'm really busy now. But I can make time for Wild Things, and I will, because it won't hold all that spectacularly, and I need to see it before it slips out of theaters.

I thought the total Horror audience would be bigger. Laremy is right that Saw may play next year to no competition. Who would want to go in and split the limited Horror dollars? The only chance is for a new horror serial to come in and take it's place. Something like Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween. How about Paranormal Activty 2?

I would actually like to commend WTWTA for doing as well as it has. It IS a well done movie for it's potential audience, but that audience is small. Take away young children, tweens, older adults not familiar with the book, older adults who couldn't care less about some angsty kid, older teenagers who are too 'cool' to see a "kid's" film, and not too many people are left. Maybe they should have had Megan Fox play the mother.

Very shocked by this weekends results, but not by the fact PA was number one, but the fact that Saw got completely destroyed. No one had it grossing that little. But from what I hear it has some strong WOM, so the drops may not be as big as usual. Lionsgate should really blame that abysmal excuse of movie Saw 5 for this mess. Mostly everybody including me hated it. As for This Is It it's really hard for me to predict that one becuause there are so many insane numbers flying around that I don't know whos the closest and whos way off. I will say that theres no way I can believe it wll do 250mill no matter who the hell says it. The only other movie that has opened really big during a school week is Passion Of The Christ, but MJ is no Jesus Christ so it's pretty ridicoulous to expect it to top that movie.

@Bustray:

But Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is a Halloween song (saw a preformance of it done at a theme park halloween show yesterday) and his death has brought a whole new awareness of at least this song that no one hates. But not bigger than Transformers 2, no, but should make a ton of money, documentary or not (many music dvd's have been these days; personally i just want to see the preformance but whatever).

I really hope this whole thing doesn't start spawning anymore way too low budget movies. Point is, you don't need 20 or 50 or 100 or 190 millon to make a good movie. But I hope it doesn't make them make more boring movies. I enjoy really low budget movies (first Saw was) like the original Last House On The Left, but Paranormal Activity will never be one of them.

How about them apples! A little low-budget, single-cam movie, with no stars and a limited release took the top spot. The movie industry may be waking out of its creative comatose and not have to rely on "commercial art" as a feeding tube.

Actually, Saw's failure or underperformance, which ever you like, has got me thinking. I wonder how long it will take for this decaying franchise to be rebooted. Five, ten years maybe? In fact I wonder what films or television shows that are currnetly popular will get there own treatment as a remake, sequel, reboot, requel, or whatever in the next decade or so on the big-screen. May not be a bad topic of conversation for another post.

@Colin: Don't count on Hollywood changing. This is my first year following the box office numbers, but it looks like Halloween is a special case. With a limited box office jump for halloween, in a slower box office season, studios need to keep the marketing costs as low as possible. Let's say you make a $15 million film and spend $10 for marketing and distribution. That means you should hope for $60 million plus from the box office. Realistic? This is why franchises succeed. They have built in marketing, helping to keep costs low. A low budget film coming in and replacing a former halloween franchise, may not be the exception, but may be the order of the halloween universe. The Cirque du Freak makers had to be hoping for a new halloween franchise, not just a successful movie. Did you hear they are trying to reinvigorate Nightmare on Elm Street? I don't think they'll release it on halloween though, the dollars might not be there, and they know they'll be competition.

I don't see Hollywood "changing" so much as being "forced to change." The huge budgets simply aren't sustainable in the current market. It's just math, and it's come about because they put all the eggs in the DVD basket… which is drying up due to alternative means of delivery (netflix / redbox / itunes).

I think you guys are severely underestimating "This Is It" this should easily do $80+ over 5 days.

I didn't think about that but Saw 5 (the theatre version; the DVD version to me is far from the best but I think in that form it's better than the 1st one) did hurt the franchise, and the 5th doesn't try to jump away from it, which it should.

Truthfully such high budgets though aren't necessary (unless it's transformers; it is needed to show such good special effects). If they didn't pay Nicole Kidman 15 million and god knows how much to the other big stars in Golden Compass, then there may have been a sequel if the budget was lower.

It's been proven, I think, that stars are worth the money. Think of Couples Retreat without Vince Vaughn. I will go to see ANY movie with Miley Cyrus in it. Nicole Kidman perhaps can't draw a U.S. audience on her own, but she still has juice overseas or The Golden Compass would have failed everywhere.

Heck, many are counting on Michael Jackson to pull in an audience. Sony had no trouble paying $50 million dollars for unedited film and Michael's star power.

P.S. A Billboard Magazine Online site says tracking surveys for "This Is It" indicate "$40 Millions or more" through sunday. The last numbers I saw for ticket presales was on October 11 indicating 1600 showtimes sold out. Best possible spin on presales is they will double to 3200 @ 300 seats @ $10 = less than or eqal to $9,200,000. Probably closer to $6,000,000.

I'm surprised at no final thoughts on 'This Is It' considering by thursday we'll know all we need to know about it.

I think I've figured out the reason for the $250 million plus worldwide estimate that keeps floating around for it. The film is costing $60 Million for the footage, at least $48 million for what turns out to be 18,000 prints in many languages.
If you postulate $20 million in marketing costs you get CONSERVATIVELY $130 million. $260 million is the very least the studio needs to break even on this release(maybe more.) Then they can make their money on DVD's, Rentals, and T.V.
And what do you know, that is about the estimate floating around. It should make $120 million to $160 million worldwide out of the blocks. Let's hope it can then cruise for home.