American Pie arrives with the designation of being the sleeper of the summer. Isn't that an oxymoron though? I mean, if everyone thinks it will hit and everyone wants to see it, can it really be called a sleeper? After all, a sleeper is, by definition, a picture that takes people by surprise and becomes a hit. This picture will not surprise me if it shoots to the top spot. The apple pie scene of the trailer has captured the audience's attention like few have. It was a real money shot, without costing the studio much money to make.

The R rating will limit its potential audience. But unless theaters truly are enforcing it, I don't think it will affect the box office significantly. Many of those slasher flicks had R ratings and big openings, most notably Scream 2's $32.9 million. Earlier this year, Varsity Blues and Cruel Intentions had R ratings, and both opened to $15.2 and $13 million respectively. Surely, American Pie has been more anticipated by the youth than those two. What concerns me though, is that after I made my prediction, I found out that, though it got a decent 2,507 theater count, it may not have gotten a decent screen count. In some areas, it doesn't appear to be playing in prime locations. Perhaps, like with South Park, some exhibitors may be trying to bury it in an attempt to avoid heat from the "blame-the-movies-for-all-our-problems" trend.

Opening at just 1,631 theaters, the long delayed Arlington Road arrives with little fanfare. The General's Daughter may have satiated the public's thriller craving, and Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins, as respected as they may be, are pretty much box office poison. But despite this, I think the marketing has been fairly solid and the picture should have a decent, if modest, opening.

Overall, box office should be down considerably from previous weeks, as most pictures out there are aging or fading fast. Also, contributing to the decrease in business will be the lack of a new, mass appeal event picture. It's kind of strange that no studio took advantage of this and opened something big. Instead they opted to crowd the coming weekends. Perhaps the other studios were expecting Wild Wild West to be much more dominating than it turned out to be.

Editor's Note: Articles published before 2001 were assigned and reported as box office briefings, not a full evaluation or analysis.