PREDICTED WEEKEND BOX OFFICE

Tyler Perry is poised to be the big man on campus this weekend with his latest Madea offering, Madea's Big Happy Family, projected to pull in about $30 million. The last two films in the series featuring the popular character opened to $30 million and $41 million so this should be on par with those debuts.

He'll face a bit of competition from Rio, last week's champ. The film has had a strong week at the box office (making $3.6 million on Wednesday alone) so it should continue to do well this weekend since there isn't much new competition for its targeted family audience. Look for it to fly into the second position, but if Perry's movie stumbles, it could be a repeat win for the tropical bird flick. Hop should manage to stay in the top 5 as well due to the holiday weekend.

The other major new release this weekend is the Robert Pattinson/Reese Witherspoon romance Water for Elephants. While Pattinson is obviously a huge draw due to his star turns in the Twilight series, his last film, Remember Me, grossed a paltry $19.1 million total domestic. Newly-married Witherspoon has a good track record at the box office but her last effort, How Do You Know, was a big flop. So the two have something to prove this weekend. I think that their star power, combined with the fact that the source material for the film was a wildly popular best-selling novel, should easily put this film on the way to making its projected $15 million.

Also opening this weekend is Disney's African Cats, a documentary from their Disneynature distribution arm. The first two films in this genre, Earth and Oceans, raked in $8.8 million and $6 million respectively for their debuts, so look for this to land somewhere in the middle around $7 million.

In limited release starting today is Morgan Spurlock's new documentary, POM Wonderful Presents the Greatest Movie Ever Sold, playing on 18 screens.