SPIKE LEE - WILL SPIKE SPIKE THE BOX OFFICE?

The box office, which has been steadily ebbing behind last year's for the past several weeks, appears destined to fall even further behind this weekend. Three new films are being released wide, but only one of them -- Spike Lee's Inside Man, starring Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster -- was even shown to critics. The horror movie Stay Alive and Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector are opening without advance critics screenings, "a strategy," today's (Friday) New York Post observed, "usually employed by studios anticipating pans." Nevertheless, any of those films stands a chance of topping last weekend's box-office leader, V for Vendetta, which many analysts had been predicting would become the year's first big blockbuster but which instead earned just over $26 million. They're now predicting that next weekend's Ice Age: The Meltdown will finally heat things up.

24/03/2006