Oblivion Aiming for $40 Million Opening

The Tom Cruise-led, sci-fi drama Oblivion is on pace to make a little over $39 million, making it one of the year's biggest worldwide openings and one of Tom Cruise's best personal opening weekends. The film, which also stars Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko, will easily take the top spot at the domestic box office, with the #2 position going to last week's #1, the baseball drama 42. Oblivion is that rare beast--a star-driven, big-budget genre film that isn't being released in 3-D. While there are a limited number of 3-D IMAX screenings, director Joseph Kosinski has said that he didn't intend the film to be seen in 3-D. That movie, notably, has theatrical trailers for Man of Steel, The Lone Ranger and R.I.P.D. attached to most prints, making the opening weekend some hardcore fanboy bait. Last week's underperforming #2, Scary Movie 5, is on pace to drop to #4 already, barely holding onto the top five and failing to clear $10 million in its second weekend. While the Scary Movie films aren't particularly expensive to make, this installment was years in the making and featured much-discussed appearances by Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan, so it seems likely that, for now at least, the franchise isn't likely to return.