HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Not a lot of competition, unless you count all the Oscar contenders finally going into wide release. $750,000.

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January 11
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FIRST SUNDAY

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Comedy about two guys trying to rob a church. If that's not funny, then I don't know funny.

WILL IT SUCK?
When's the last time Ice Cube was in a good comedy? Okay, Barbershop 2 got good reviews. But still. Teaming up with Tracy Morgan's not a bad idea, though. Written and directed by David E. Talbert, who appears to be Tyler Perry with a slightly better IMDB rating.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Some of the family demo will be at the latest Veggie Tales, but Cube can hold his own. $40mil.

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IN THE NAME OF THE KING: A DUNGEON SIEGE TALE

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Uwe Boll's The Lord of the Rings

WILL IT SUCK?
What part of Uwe Boll did you not understand? Once again, he's managed to gather some not-altogether-crappy names to his cast, in spite of, well, being Uwe Boll: Ray Liotta, Jason Statham, Burt Reynolds (!?!), Ron Perlman and LOTR's own John Rhys-Davies.

Early buzz (and it's had plenty of time to gather it in the year or so since it's been completed) is predictably crap-ridden.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Each Uwe Boll film has made no more than half the gross of its predecessor, and yet he still gets to make movies. $1mil.

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27 DRESSES

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
My Sister's Wedding

WILL IT SUCK?
Writer Aline Brosh McKenna bought herself a lot of romcom cred with her adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada. That plus Judy Greer as the wacky best friend lets me give this a chance.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Mad Money is a bit of an issue the following week, but the real test is if Katherine Heigel can draw a crowd without help from the Apatow Players. $26mil.

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THE PIRATES WHO DON'T DO ANYTHING: A VEGGIE TALES MOVIE

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
The Three Amigos, but with vegetables and pirates (and, no, it wouldn't make any more sense if I tried to explain it further).

WILL IT SUCK?
Even critics don't completely hate this series, and audiences love it and want to have, like, a thousand of its babies (presumably in wedlock). From the same team who did all the others, so expect similar results.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Expect similar results here, too. $26mil.

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SUMMER PALACE

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Epic romance set against the backdrop of Tianamen Square.

WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is mixed, with audiences liking it more than critics. China banned the director from making films for five years because he submitted it to Cannes without government approval. And Renny Harlin is still at large.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Controversial or not, it's a foreign film in January with bad critical notices. $250,000.

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January 18
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CLOVERFIELD

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Godzilla shot handheld.

WILL IT SUCK?
Director Matt Reeves last feature film was The Pallbearer, but he's done plenty of TV since then. Mostly Felicity. Not sure how I feel about that. Writer Drew Goddard worked on some of the more tolerable eps of the horrible final seasons of Angel and Buffy, not to mention some kick-ass Lost eps.
The common denominator, of course, is J. J. Abrams, so if his influence helps at all here, there's reason to be psyched.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
The brilliance of this project isn't in the premise; it's in the release date. No one else thinks to release something that might actually be good in January. But now Cloverfield has the geekboy fanbase all to itself.

Well, except for the snippets who'll go see Rambo or Be Kind Rewind the following week. Strangely, Cloverfield's demo is made up, more or less, of those two demos. $56mil.

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MAD MONEY

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Three Federal Reserve janitors (Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes) decide to rob their work, then yell at each other about how to invest the money while pressing giant sound effects buttons and yelling "Boo-yah!". Okay, maybe not that last part.

WILL IT SUCK?
From the director of Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, so, yeah, there's that. Screenwriter did the decent enough Fracture. Really, though, we're all just glad to see Holmes get out of the house.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
A little bit of competition from 27 Dresses' second frame, but the bigger problem is a lack of awareness. $37mil.

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TEETH

(Delayed from November)

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Story about a woman who has teeth, you know, down there.

WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is good. Fun fact: The writer/director is Roy Lichtenstein's son.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Indie horror comedy usually does better on DVD. $500,000.

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CITY OF MEN

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
More drugs and kids doing what they shouldn't in Brazil.

WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is good. Directed by Paulo Morelli, who also directed eps of the TV series on which this is based, itself a spin-off of the Fernando Meirelles classic, City of God. Screenwriter Elena Soarez also wrote for the series, and scripted the lauded House of Sand.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
The much more buzzy 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days comes out next week and Woody Allen opens this week with his latest. If this were an actual sequel to City of God with Meirelles directing, it might compete. $1mil.

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CASSANDRA'S DREAM

(Delayed from December)

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Woody Allen goes all London thriller on us again.

WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is good. Not Match Point good. But good. Hard not to get psyched for Colin Farrell, Ewan McGregor and Tom Wilkinson all working off a decent script.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Presumably in a better position now than it was in December, with fifty other high profile indies with which to compete. Then again, it's January. And almost nothing does as well in January. $5mil.

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TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
The Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room guys take on torture.

WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is fantastic. Writer/director Alex Gibney is turning into quite the political documentarian, having produced Who Killed the Electric Car? and No End in Sight since directing and co-writing Enron. The topper, though, is the MPAA's stunning reaction to the poster.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Nobody knows that this movie exists. Might do better closer to election season. $500,000.

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January 25
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UNTRACEABLE

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
A guy uses the interwebs to kill folk.

WILL IT SUCK?
Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear, Frequency, Fracture) has potential and one of the eighteen screenwriters did Resurrecting the Champ, which is supposed to not suck, but it'll take a lot more than that to convince me to go see a movie where I (a) know everything from the trailer already and (b) have to watch a depiction of the Internet that will probably make Ted Stevens look like Vint Cerf.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
With Rambo sucking up most of the oxygen and Cloverfield's second frame drawing true thriller junkies and The Eye opening the following week, this doesn't stand a chance. $16mil.

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RAMBO

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
If it worked for Rocky...

WILL IT SUCK?
Sly was able to write and direct the Rocky franchise back into critical acclaim for the first time in 30 years, so far be it from me to say he can't do it again. I will remind you, however, that he did write and direct Staying Alive, arguably the best bad film ever, so it's kind of a win-win.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
The only thing as high profile as this is Cloverfield, and that'll be on its second frame. $71mil.

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HOW SHE MOVE

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Indie You Got Served

WILL IT SUCK?
Early buzz is good and the director did the underseen Touch of Pink.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
No idea why they're releasing this wide. I would think their edge is in treating this like an indie and letting word of mouth buoy a platform release. That having been said, Stomp the Yard might as well have been an indie for all its no-name cast, and it did just fine with a wide release. $27mil.

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MEET THE SPARTANS

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
300 Movie

WILL IT SUCK?
By most accounts the Movie movies have been getting progressively worse, and they didn't exactly start off as classics of American comedy.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
They've seen diminishing financial returns as well. $29mil.

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BE KIND REWIND

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Two video store clerks (Jack Black, Mos Def) set out to remake classic films that one of them accidentally erased.

WILL IT SUCK?
Written and directed by Michel Gondry, so already it's good times. And judging by the trailer, they'll make the most of a terrific premise.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Definitely the 800lb gorilla in Indiewood. $24mil.

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THE AIR I BREATHE

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Interweaving plot ensemble drama based upon four emotional cornerstones. What? I'm not going to tell you what they are; that would be a spoiler.

WILL IT SUCK?
The emotions are played by Forest Whitaker, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Brendan Fraser and Kevin Bacon. John Cho plays Bart. He is not one of the emotions. In spite of this all sounding like a night school drama class acting exercise, the early buzz is very good.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
The type of movie that, in spite of a strong cast, gets forgotten before anyone knows it was out. Just look at Feast of Love. Exactly. $4mil.

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4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
Woman in 80's Romania tries to get an abortion.

WILL IT SUCK?
A presumptive Best Foreign Oscar contender, if not outright frontrunner, this has already won a crapload of awards. Three of them were at Cannes including, oh, what's that little one? Oh, right, the Palme D'Or.

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
It's hard to get better buzz for a foreign film. $2mil.

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U2 3D

WHAT'S THE PITCH?
3D concert flick that was clearly designed to force me into an IMAX theater.

WILL IT SUCK?
That doesn't seem to be the point. The main thing being hawked about this film is that it's the first live action flick to be entirely shot, posted (whatever the hell that means) and edited in 3D. Mark Pellington, who helped conceive Zoo TV and directed the "Jeremy" video and thus never has to do anything else again to be eternally cool, co-directs.

I, of course, am U2's bitch so I hereby declare this to be the greatest film ever made, sight unseen.

Early buzz, coincidentally, is quite good (although I suspect that's just a bunch of U2 fanatics chiming in on IMDB, not that there's anything wrong with that).

HOW WELL WILL IT DO?
Ironically, where releasing a mainstream film (Rattle and Hum) got them nowhere, releasing a 3D film on far fewer screens may show better returns. $9mil.

Next Month: The Indiana Jones trailer will probably be more exciting than any actual movie coming out.