Weekend Forecast: Bosses, Zookeeper to Wilt in Dark of the Moon

There's something for pretty much everybody this weekend at the movies -- fresh new dishes and some heat-lamped empty calories at the multiplex, crypto-spiritual potboilers and swell nonfiction at the art house. And a variety of snacks in between. But only one can be America's favorite.* Your Weekend Forecast is here.

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NATIONAL OUTLOOK

· Horrible Bosses: The Golden Era of R-Rated Comedy -- or at least the era of R-rated comedy that seems to be lucrative if not particularly well-developed or consistently funny -- rolls on with this effort. Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day co-star with their namesake nemeses Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston, enlisting "murder consultant" Jamie Foxx to help them dispatch the bastards before another humiliating workplace episode can unfold. The ensemble's great if not exactly... hot, but that's good enough for No. 2 opposite a Transformers franchise that will barrel back to the finish line Sunday night with around $45 million in its tank. And in keeping with the raunchy spirit of the summer, it will be a solid No. 2! Wait, that totally came out wrong. Ugh, so did that. UGH. FORECAST: $31.2 million

· Zookeeper: Talking animals. Kevin James. PG rating. That's like a license to print money. A bit of a grueling, unfunny, overbearing license, but a license nonetheless. And don't forget it's got the Gorilla Technology Envelope going for it, which is good for at least... er... Just never mind. FORECAST: $24.1 million

REGIONAL OUTLOOK

It's tough to say what leads a busy week of indie rollouts in limited release. There's definitely something to be said for The Ledge, which really is the state of the art when it comes to atheist-fundamentalist-ex-hooker love-triangle thrillers. Meanwhile, on the nonfiction side, actor-turned-director Michael Rapaport's documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest tells the candid inside story of the legendary hip-hop act, and Oscar-winning Man on Wire director James Marsh's latest, Project Nim, gets to the bottom of an experiment in which a chimp raised pretty much as a human. It ends about as well as you'd expect. And on the foreign side, Stephanie Zacharek recommends French provoacateur Catherine Breillat's sumptuous fairy tale for adults, The Sleeping Beauty. Finally Ohn Carpenter is back after a decade away with the girls' sanitarium horror fable The Ward.

Take your picks and call your shots below!

*: Which is to say, attain a relatively modest midsummer No. 1 at the box office.