Friday Box Office – BATTLE: LOS ANGELES Has Big $13.5 Million Debut; RED RIDING HOOD in Second; MARS NEEDS MOMS Needs Audiences

The 2011 box office isn’t out of its slump quite yet, but at least it’s starting to make an effort.  On Friday Sony’s PG-13 Battle: Los Angeles debuted to an estimated $13.5 million from 3,417 locations.  That puts the alien invasion pic on track for a weekend above $35 million – right about where Rango finished last Sunday.  The latter lizard landed in third this Friday but could leap back to second when weekend numbers are released.  Warner Brothers’ Red Riding Hood claimed the second spot but will have to do much better than its $5.7 million debut to reach the high teens many were predicting for the film’s weekend.  Finally, Disney has a real problem with Mars Needs Moms.  The last of the creepy toons to come out of Robert Zemeckis’ IMD brand, the $150 millionMoms made just $1.7 million on Friday and will be lucky to see $10 million by Sunday.  Full details and analysis tomorrow.

nd analysis tomorrow.

	Title	Friday	Total
1	Battle: LA	$13,500,000	$13.5
2	Red Riding Hood	$5,700,000	$5.7
3	Rango	$5,500,000	$51.1
4	The Adjustment Bureau	$3,400,000	$30.3
5	Mars Needs Moms	$1,700,000	$1.7

 

 

New Trailer for RED RIDING HOOD

Warner Bros. has released a new trailer for Red Riding Hood, which opens similarly to theNovember teaser before it delving deeper into the plot.  Amanda Seyfried (Letters to Juliet) stars as Valerie, a beautiful young woman torn between a brooding outsider (Shiloh Fernandez) and the wealthy man of her parents’ dreams (Max Irons).  Unfortunately, one of them may be the wolf that terrorizes her village.  (Such virility is a turn-on, but werewolves are notorious commitment-phobes.)  Gary Oldman, Billy Burke, Virginia Madsen, and Julie Christie also star.

Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) directed the gothic re-imagining of the familiar tale; Red Riding Hood is due in theaters March 11.  .

 

Everything looks and sounds so silly, but there’s no sense that Hardwicke is playing it any way but straight.  Is this camp?  A period piece set to nu metal?  A Twilight knockoff?  I don’t know yet.  I believe Red Riding Hood could turn out really well, and I’m digging on the snow-covered sets.  But I haven’t seen greatness in either of the trailers.

Judge for yourself.  Watch in HD at Apple.

In Red Riding Hood, Seyfried plays Valerie, a beautiful young woman torn between two men. She is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), but her parents have arranged for her to marry the wealthy Henry (Max Irons). Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter are planning to run away together when they learn that Valerie’s older sister has been killed by the werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. For years, the people have maintained an uneasy truce with the beast, offering the creature a monthly animal sacrifice. But under a blood red moon, the wolf has upped the stakes by taking a human life.

Hungry for revenge, the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon (Gary Oldman), to help them kill the wolf. But Solomon’s arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them. As the death toll rises with each moon, Valerie begins to suspect that the werewolf could be someone she loves. As panic grips the town, Valerie discovers that she has a unique connection to the beast–one that inexorably draws them together, making her both suspect… and bait.