'The Grey' looks to guide box office pack

Liam Neeson in "The Gray"Weekend box office prospects are searching just a little gray in comparison towards the previous three weekends, with Open Road's wolf adventure pic "The Gray" searching to guide those while Fox Searchlight tries an ambitious countrywide expansion for Oscar-nominated "The Descendants." In comparison, every week to date this season had a minumum of one film earn north of $20 million, capped by "The Demon Inside" which first showed Jan. 6 with $33 million.Most commentators expect Liam Neeson starrer "The Gray" hitting around $12 million through Sunday. Summit's "Guy on the Ledge" is forecasted to bow somewhere within the high single-numbers, then Lionsgate's "One Your money can buyInch monitoring within the $5 million-$7 million range.In the second outing, The new sony-Screen Gems' "Underworld Awakening" is anticipated to decrease between 50%-58%, putting the film within the mix for that weekend's top place. "Awakening" bowed to $25.3 million.Other Oscar-nommed game titles will even turn to make hay of the nods."Descendants," at nearly 2,000 locations, sees the largest rollout of best picture Oscar-nominated photos, that also includes the Weinstein Co.'s "The Artist," broadening to 897 playdates, and Paramount's $56 million grosser "Hugo," at 965. Entering its eleventh frame, "The Descendants" has cumed $52 million locally by Wednesday "The Artist" to date has totalled $13 million."Descendants" will have a large weekend outdoors the States, because it launches inside a total 25 offshore marketplaces, including South america, France, Germany, India, Russia and also the U.K.Top holiday holdovers, "A Virtual Detective: A Game Title of Shadows" and "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol," also expand to new areas a few days ago. "Holmes," that has cumed $261.3 million worldwide, bows in France, while "Mission," approaching $340 million, opens in China and Italia.B.O. experts maintain that it is unlikely overall box office will match previous years' totals, such as with 2009 when Fox's Neeson sleeper hit "Taken" kickstarted its $145 million-Stateside run this same weekend by having an opening gross of nearly $25 million.Like "Taken," R-ranked "The Gray" should appeal mostly for an over-25 male audience, though Open Road stated the pic saw a current uptick in female interest.Allocated at $20 million, "The Gray" follows several oil-rig bruisers brought by Neeson, who battle to survive after their plane crashes within the Alaskan backwoods. Pic, which reunites Neeson with "A-Team" helmer Joe Carnahan.Open Road stated it used several mix-marketing methods to promote the pic to Christian as well as other ethnic groups. Distrib also joined using the Weather Funnel to advertise "Gray," concentrating on the pic's hazardous filming conditions in Alaska. "The Gray" marks just the second release for that distrib, after last year's "Killer Elite," which made $25 million locally.Also competing for male attention, Summit's "Guy on the Ledge," starring Mike Worthington, Jamie Bell and Erectile dysfunction Harris, cost you a reported $48 million. Tax savings and foreign pre-sales reduced the studio's contact with roughly $8.5 million."Guy on the Ledge," together with Lionsgate's "One your money can buy,Inch are the initial game titles to spread out concurrently following the Lionsgate-Summit merger earlier this year. It's reported that neither company desired to move their pic given that they already had spent a large amount of the media budget. Katherine Heigl mystery pic "One your money can buy,Inch in line with the Jesse Evanovich character, should behave as effective female counterprogramming.For "Guy," Summit joined with Livingsocial, offering a buy-one-get-one-free date package, while Lionsgate offered half-cost tickets for "Money" via Groupon.Near the weekend's trio of Oscar pic challengers, Kerbside Attractions' "Albert Nobbs," with three nominations including actress for Glenn Close, bows in a healthy 246 Stateside locations.Weinstein's "The Iron Lady," that also received an offer for the best actress for Meryl Streep, adds under 200 locations for any total 1,244. Last week, "Iron Lady" arrived within the top ten, having a modified weekend gross of $3.7 million. Pic has cumed $13.9 million locally since bowing 12 ,. 30. Contact Andrew Stewart at andrew.stewart@variety.com