De Niro, Pacino set to make box office 8216;kill8217;

Righteous Kill, a rare pairing of the longtime A-listers, is a favourite to top the weekend collections.

A week after the box office sank to its lowest level in five years, sales should rebound significantly this weekend with five wide openers, including a thriller starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.

Righteous Kill, a rare pairing of the longtime A-listers, is a consensus favourite 8212; though no sure shot 8212; to top the weekend with an opening in the mid- to high-teen millions. The cop thriller, directed by Jon Avnet, comes from Overture Films, the indie studio behind the arthouse hit The Visitor.

8220;We targeted the older male audience, and it looks like they8217;re going to come,8221; Overture marketing chief Peter Adee said. 8220;From the tracking, it looks like the younger males are going to come as well.8221;

Women could be another matter, given the presence of more female-friendly openers among the competition. Overture executives hope the usual appeal of Pacino and De Niro with older women will prompt a late surge in date-night support for 8220;Kill.8221;

The most obvious first choice for women 8212; Picturehouse8217;s remake of the comedy The Women 8212; looks unlikely to vie for an upper rung in the weekend rankings. 8220;Women8221; is a swan-song release for Picturehouse, which Warner Bros. is shuttering as the studio largely abandons the specialty-film business.

The likeliest competitor 8220;Kill8221; will have to fend off for the session8217;s crown appears to be the Coen brothers8217; comedy Burn After Reading from Focus Features and Working Title. Prerelease tracking indicates an opening in the mid-teen millions or higher, which would give Focus its biggest opening.

The first-weekend tally for 8220;Burn8221; will depend on critical praise more than any of the other new releases. Early reviews have been mostly positive but hardly raves for the filmmakers8217; first release since their best picture Oscar winner No Country for Old Men.

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Tyler Perry8217;s The Family That Preys from Lionsgate is a notable wild card in this weekend8217;s mix of wide openers. Tracking indicates that a robust moviegoing weekend could see 8220;Family8221; opening near the 21.4 million bow by Perry8217;s Why Did I Get Married? in October.

Yet on the low end of prerelease projections, 8220;Family8221; would ring up just 15 million or so. So far the casting of Kathy Bates 8212; the first major-role white actor in a Perry pic 8212; doesn8217;t seem to be broadening interest in the release beyond the filmmaker8217;s usual base of support with urban demos.

Elsewhere this weekend, Slowhand Releasing unspools the patriotic documentary 8220;Proud American8221; in a barely wide bow of about 750 playdates.

Just added to the release calendar two weeks ago, prospects appear limited to the low-single-digit millions for the maiden theatrical voyage of writer-director Fred Ashman.