Weekend Forecast: What Movies Are in Your Easter Basket?

Good Friday means more in Hollywood this weekend than just the official start of the Easter holiday. It means cashing in on a new Tyler Perry film, wringing a lucrative second week out of the world favorite new animated bird, and counting on Twilight Nation to drop by the multiplex for Rob Pattinson's latest extracurricular effort. Read on to call your box-office shots.

NATIONAL OUTLOOK

· Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family: After nearly a full day of considering the Tyler Perry box-office paradox, Movieline's Center for the Advanced Study of Muu-Muu Rocking Auteurs concludes that this Madea film -- Perry's first since the unheralded classic Madea Goes to Jail in 2009 (seriously -- check out the forklift scene) -- occupies the perfect position to knock off last week's number-one Rio. Madea franchise entries historically outperform Perry's non-Madea efforts on opening weekend, and with the holiday to boot, the numbers should easily exceed $30 million. Hallelujeeerrrr indeed. FORECAST: $34.7 million [Review forthcoming Friday]

· Water For Elephants: Reese Witherspoon needs a hit after How Do You Know. Robert Pattinson needs a life after Twilight. Christoph Waltz needs a big studio splash after Inglourious Bastards. Why not team them up for an adaptation of Sara Gruen's best-selling 2006 novel, a book-club staple about the simmering love triangle between a young veterinarian, an equestrian circus moll and her abusive, animal-trainer husband? Wait, what? Anyway, this might work for ladies who haven't had a whole lot to choose from in recent weeks, and is a solid top-three choice in any case. The big question is what to expect from weeks two and three. Word-of-mouth success? Or turgid period treacle? To be continued... FORECAST: $13.3 million

· African Cats: Simple, straightforward, zebra-devouring fun for the whole family. Oh, and OMG THE CUBS ARE ADORBZZZZ. This will encounter a bit of a dent from the Easter-weekend Hop resurgence, but should still manage to beat the bunny by sheer African-cat will alone. FORECAST: $7.8 million

REGIONAL OUTLOOK

It's not looking so hot at the art house this weekend. On the one hand you've got Morgan Spurlock doing the Morgan Spurlock thing -- to wit, selling himself to a few dozen highest bidders for his art -- in the comic product-placement documentary POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. On the other you've got the super-timely but maddeningly inconsistent The Bang Bang Club, featuring Ryan Phillippe and Taylor Kitsch as combat photographers documenting the end of apartheid in South Africa -- as topical a release as you're going to get in the wake of Tim Hetherington's tragic death covering the war in Libya. Wild Hong Kong action rules the day in Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, and the indie vampire thriller Stake Land graduates from festival-circuit acclaim into limited release.

What's in your Easter basket this weekend?