Sure, Sarah Palin believes she can beat President Barack Obama in 2012, but the could-be candidate has a more pressing opponent: Harry Potter.
This weekend, the Palin-endorsed documentary The Undefeated squares off at theaters against Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
Does it stand a chance? Does she? Can she really beat him—you know, the wizard kid?
For starters, barring a Voldemort spell, no one and no film is going to deny the last Potter film a final No. 1 opening.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, bowing on more than 4,000 screens, many of them 3-D, has already scored a $43.6 million overseas debut and raked in a reported $32 million here from advance-ticket sales.
Box Office Mojo's Brandon Gray told us the film's easily looking at a $130 million Friday-Sunday domestically, and maybe a Dark Knight-besting take in the neighborhood of $160 million.
As for The Undefeated—it's opening on 10 screens in cities such as Kennesaw, Ga., and Grapevine, Texas. But don't take that stat to mean Potter's going to rout Palin.
If The Undefeated can get off to a start like Bowling for Columbine, to name a Michael Moore documentary that's presumably nothing like Palin's, the movie would rival, and possibly surpass Deathly Hallows Part 2 for per-screen-average bragging rights. (Last fall's Deathly Hallows Part 1 averaged about $30,000 at each of its opening-weekend theaters.)
Still, that's a big if.
As of Wednesday, the documentary's distributor had no word on advance sell-outs, if any. "Our people are reporting back that there's good momentum," Trevor Drinkwater, CEO of ARC Entertainment, said."…But we're trying to keep our expectations [in check]."
Gray said he thought The Undefeated would perform better than most documentaries, but not better than Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
"Palin is so plentiful in the media as it is," Gray said. "It's not like [the film's] an answer to whether she's running for President or not."
Here's a look, meanwhile, at some of the biggest opening-weekend per-screen-average debuts from recent months, per Box Office Mojo stats:
- Midnight in Paris, $99,834 (six screens)
- The Tree of Life, $93,230 (four screens)
- The King's Speech, $88,863 (four screens)
- Black Swan, $80,212 (18 screens)