4th of July Smorgasbord
The Fourth of July weekend looks to be filled with full multiplexes as Magic Mike XXL and Terminator Genisys open tomorrow (Weds, 7/1), joining Jurassic World, Inside Out and Ted 2 in a battle royale for eyeballs and bottoms.

Available screens are something to consider as Warner Bros.' Mike will be in a reported 3,355 venues and Paramount's Genisys in 3,758.

Pundits are plugging for both films to earn $50M for the five-day frame. That puts Mike earning around the $39.1M its predecessor, the original Magic Mike, made during its June 29 - July 1, 2012 opening. It would also speculate that Genisys debuts at around the same interest level that Terminator Salvation did when it opened with $42.6M in 2009.

Of course, neither Salvation, nor the third installment in the series, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which made $44M its three-day July 4th weekend in 2003, ended up being embraced by fans as part of the canon. But, given that the series creator, James Cameron has given his thumbs up to Genisys a "'Jurassic' skip, where the audience wildly embraces the return to form of the new film and forgets about the series misfires, may be in effect. But word on the street has not been kind to Genisys so it may be the only thing being skipped.

Regardless, this 4th will be much more active that last year, when the only tentpole in sight was the two-hour and forty-five minute long Transformers: Age of Extinction in its second week and the fourth weekends for 22 Jump Street and How to Train Your Dragon 2. The only new films were Tammy, with Melissa McCarthy, Deliver Us From Evil and Earth to Echo.

Warner also announced that Batkid Begins, which opened in 4 theaters in N.Y., L.A. and San Francisco, making $21K, will widen July 10th to include Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Toronto, Seattle and Washington, DC.