"Max Payne" is an appropriate title for 20th Century Fox's latest movie. Maximum pain is what the studio has been enduring at the box office.
The stylized, PG-13-rated thriller starring Mark Wahlberg should open at the top of the weekend charts with $20 million or more in ticket sales -- halting Fox's slump and giving the News Corp. studio its first No. 1 launch in seven months -- as moviegoers opt for escapism over serious drama.
Oliver Stone's political biography "W.," from distributor Lionsgate, could face apathy from a public that has just watched eight years of the real thing. The picture, starring Josh Brolin as the president, is tracking in surveys to open at about $10 million, putting it in the mix for No. 2 with the female-oriented, coming-of-age drama "The Secret Life of Bees" and the holdover comedy "Beverly Hills Chihuahua."
"Max Payne," adapted from a video game and made for about $35 million, opens at 3,376 theaters in the U.S. and Canada. Wahlberg, who burnished his action credentials in "The Departed" and "Shooter," plays a cop whose family is slain, and Mila Kunis is an assassin with vengeance on her mind too, after her sister's murder. The pair are hunted by police, the mob and the obligatory ruthless corporation.
Fox hasn't had a weekend champ or a $100-million hit at the domestic box office since its animated Dr. Seuss tale "Horton Hears a Who!" came out in March. After summer flops including "Meet Dave," "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" and "Babylon A.D.," the studio's fall campaign didn't start any better: Its science fiction adventure "City of Ember" opened last weekend to $3.1 million, not even making it into the top 10 movies at the box office.
For "Max Payne," although the core gamer audience is on board, "there are a number of other elements which give the film an inherently broader appeal," said Pam Levine, Fox's co-president of domestic marketing. "The audience really responds to the unique, compelling visual style and narrative -- it just doesn't look like anything you've seen before."
The PG-13-rated "W.," which Stone shot in 46 days and rushed into the market for the campaign's final stretch, features Elizabeth Banks as Laura Bush, James Cromwell as George H.W. Bush and Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice -- the biggest Hollywood upgrade since Robert Downey Jr. was cast as Times columnist Steve Lopez in "The Soloist."
