Scream for the Birds!

Where are we now? In the middle of April. Two $100 million earning movies. One potentially on its way to make it soon (talking about Hop). And most importantly we are on the verge of the summer season to begin. In comparison with last year, 2011 frankly has hardly been anything great. By about the same time last year, Alice in Wonderland had become a monstrous hit with earnings already exceeding $300 million, Valentine's Day had appealed to the romantics with revenues of more than $100 million, Clash of the Titans despite its not so rave reviews was appealing to the worldwide audience and How to Train Your Dragon was already on the way to hit the $200 million mark and was talked about being Oscar-stuff. Film studios are going to have their hopes pinned on the mega releases lined up for the summer session if this year has to catch up. But before we enter the month of May, there are still a few movies trying to win the hearts of the audience. And Rio is a strong contender amongst this weekend's releases. An animated movie, with colourful birds, songs and dances, and exotic settings of Brazil, the ingredients have been carefully put in by Carlos Saldanha who has previously seen success with the Ice Age series. But will it be enough? If the numbers from Friday are anything to go by, Rio will easily be on top of the US charts by the end of the weekend but is unlikely to reproduce the numbers of the Ice Age series. There is still that feeling of connection missing from this movie, the soul that was very much present in the animated movies of last year that met with such incredible critical and commercial success. On the heels of Rio would be Scream 4, the fourth movie of the horror series that made white screaming masks quite a hit. Scream series has had its share of loyal followers in the past and the movies have done well commerically with Scream 3 being the only one not to make it to $100 million earnings at the US box office. But it has been 11 years since the release of Scream 3 and that seems quite a long time to reignite the series. The loyal followers would have moved on, new ones will be hooked to a range of other horror flicks that have emerged since then, and Scream 4 would have to put together a good script if it has any chance of recreating the magic of the old movies of the series. So let us hope the mediocrity that seems to have stemmed into Hollywood this year so far is broken soon. Fingers crossed!