The Weekend Preview, sort of

Better late than never, right? The Weekend team took Wednesday off in order to bring you the exact same product one day later! (Oh, and Tonya broke her toe, Josh's car broke down, and Daniel was at the beach.) Though we do have something special for you... a brand new look! Not only did our graphics guy give the recap a new look, he gave us a brand-new look for the Preview. Color-wise, the idea is that you won't be able to confuse the Preview with the Recap. (You know, when Charles doesn't update his site that often. And he calls us slackers.)

(We must apologize though for this week's edition, because Daniel is still camping at the beach, and he's the financial guy, so no stocks update this week. He'll be back for the Recap, though, so stay tuned then for a nice summary of the financial markets!)

Hey! There are snakes on a weekend! Snakes on a Friday! Snakes on a Saturday! Snakes on a Sunday! Snakes on a... you get the idea. Competing for dollars this weekend are a college-buddy movie and a movie starring Hilary and Haylie Duff. Still believe Hollywood is choosing quality scripts? Me either. Here's your quick look at the films opening this Friday:

Accepted - Bartelby Gaines isn't getting accepted into any college anywhere. And his friends aren't getting in either. So how goes Bartelby make his parents happy and get noticed by his dream girl Monica? He opens up his own fake university! They create the South Harmon Institute of Technology, and make everything a little too convincing, because suddenly there are hundreds of people showing up for school! HA! And really, since it's not actually a school, it becomes the biggest party school around. And that's the "plot" of the film! HA! Starring Justin "I'm a Mac" Long, Lewis Black and Jonah Hill.

Material Girls - Ava and Tanzie have it all. They're heiresses to a multi-million dollar hotel cosmetics company and approach life as one big party. But when the Hiltons Marchetta's become involved in a scandal, the girls are left penniless, homeless and helpless. (?) The easy way out is to sell the company, but that would "forever taint the name of their late father," who built the company from the ground up. And that would end the movie in about twenty minutes. So instead, this buddy comedy sees our heroes doing whatever it takes to grow up, take initiative, learn responsibility and TAKE BACK THE COMPANY. I bet they succeed, AND they throw a party. Losers. Starring the Duff sisters, Anjelica Huston, Brent Spiner and Lukas Haas.

Snakes on a Plane - So there's this FBI agent who is escorting a witness to a brutal mob murder on a plane, flying from Hawaii to Los Angeles. But the crime boss doesn't want the witness to testify (Really?) and smuggles hundreds of poisonous snakes onto a plan. And he's so smart that he figures out a way to get the snakes to come out midway through the flight! And thus we have snakes on a plane. And then banding together, surviving, defeating the snakes, blah blah blah. Nobody cares about the actual films, they just want to say that they saw Snakes on a Plane! Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Julianna "Nurse Hathaway" Margulies, Nathan Philipps and Flex Alexander.

It's time for the prediction part of the program, where we lock in our bets as to what films will open in what number this weekend. To make it even more fun, we predict how much each film will make, all without looking at any industry predictions to base our numbers on.

Which films do we think will do really well this weekend? Find out below!

1. Snakes on a Plane, $40-45 million. The thriller will definitely slither it's way into first place, but anything more than $45 million is streaching it.
2. Talladega Nights, $20-$25 million. It's not that it's that great of a film that keeps the Ricky Bobby ballad in the top five... it's just that there aren't many alternatives.
3. Accepted, $20-$25 million. This film could make it to second place, but it's unlikely. It appeals to a similar crowd as Talladega does, but I don't think that the market will find this film to be that popular.
4. Step Up, $15-20 million. It's popular enough still, I think, to stay in the top five. I can't quite place my finger on why I think that, but it's a feeling that I have. Or maybe that's heartburn. I get intuition and acid reflux mixed up more times than I care to admit.
5. Material Girls, $15-20 million. The story that is very obviously based loosely on the Hilton sisters Paris and whatsherface will attract the teeny bobber crowd. But not too many of them, hopefully. The last thing we need is for Hollywood to think that movies vaguely based on the Hilton sisters is a great way to make money.

And that's going to do it for this week's late edition of the Weekend Preview. We hope you enjoyed it more than we did, because we didn't enjoy it AT ALL. (We're mostly lying about that, BTW.) Stay tuned for the Weekend Recap when we look at the week that was in the world of business. Plus, the box office scoreboard and we find out of the predictions that you just read are fact or fiction! Until then, stay safe and remember to always keep your lens cap on!