It's difficult to imagine Iron Man having done as well as it did last week without the support of the critical community. This week the film hopes to maintain its spot atop the box office, which should have belonged to poor Speed Racer, the Wachowski Brothers' first non-Matrix film since their delicious Bound. The film should have been a contender, but critics have pissed on its grotesque, rapid-fire aesthetic, and when you're trying to foist the big-movie debut of a character like Speed Racer, every bit the B-lister that Iron Man is, you need all the help you can get. With a good chunk of its target audience still wanting to catch up with Iron Man for the first time (maybe even a second) this weekend, Speed Racer will be lucky to rake up $33 million. That means Fox's What Happens in Vegas won't be too far behind. Opening in approximately 3,200 locations, this surprisingly unhateable rom-com starring Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher is garnering the better reviews, but it still has to complete with the likes of Made of Honor, Baby Mama, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. $18 million seems likely for the weekend. Even lower down on the charts, David Mamet's new film, Redbelt, hopes to crack the Top 10, and given its performance last week on only six screens, it may just do that. Expanding into 1,000 locations on a small wave of critical acclaim, $2 million is in the film's cards. In select cities or limited release: The Fall, Frontier(s), Battle for Haditha, Poultrygeist, Turn the River, The Babysitters, The Tracey Fragments, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, Before the Rain, Noise, A Previous Engagement, Unsettled, Bloodline, The Memory Thief, Edgar Allen Poe's House of Usher, Refusenik, Surfwise, and Vice.

Box Office Forecast (5/9/08 - 5/11/08):
1. Iron Man: $49.2 million
2. Speed Racer: $33.3 million
3. What Happens in Vegas: $18.1 million
4. Made of Honor: $8.5 million
5. Baby Mama: $6.3 million
6. Forgetting Sarah Marshall: $3.5 million
7. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay: $3.3 million
8. Redbelt: $2.1 million
9. The Forbidden Kingdom: $1.9 million
10. Nim's Island: $1.7 million

Ed Gonzalez
© slant magazine, 2008.