Check out how Entertainment Weekly predicts things will go for “Alice In Wonderland” at box office this weekend.

While all of Hollywood is in a tizzy over the upcoming Oscar weekend, most moviegoers are far more interested in following Alice–and Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter–down the rabbit hole. Tim Burton’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland is the first movie to bow in 3-D since Avatar changed the rules of the game. And while Burton’s film has already been criticized for its 2-D to 3-D conversion compared to Avatar’s advanced technological efforts, it’s still set to dominate the weekend in a big way. Almost every other studio has left Burton and Depp alone this frame for what is sure to be the duo’s most successful opening weekend ever. The only other new wide release this weekend is Overture’s 2009 Sundance film Brooklyn’s Finest, which is bowing in more than 1900 theaters. Here’s how we predict these films will fare:

1. Alice in Wonderland: $71 million

Disney pulled out all the stops with its beautiful, eye-catching campaign for Burton’s interpretation of Carroll’s world. Too bad the reviews of the film haven’t been as pleasant. It’s unlikely those reviews will hurt the film’s opening weekend, but if audiences agree, it could lead to a severe drop off for the film’s second week. Also working in the movie’s b.o. favor is its 3-D release. Burton and Depp’s last pairing was 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That movie bowed to $56.2 million in the middle of summer, and this film is likely to outgross it. More expensive 3-D tickets, plus the absence of other kid-friendly films in market could put the PG-rated release into record-breaking territory. Look for it to beat Warner Bros.’s March record-holder, the 2007 $70 million debut of 300.

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Starpulse have written a great article about which classic fairy tales they’d like Tim Burton to make a remake of. What movie would you like to see him do and what do you think of their choices?

Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s newest collaboration, Alice in Wonderland, hits theaters today. Tim usually scores big when he remakes anything, and it is rumored that he is working on revamping the Disney fairy tale Sleeping Beauty as a live-action picture, focusing on the film’s villain, Maleficent.

Best known as the director of Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sweeney Todd, Tim usually creates dark and quirky-themed movies and loves using Johnny Depp in his films. We picked a few more fairy tales we’d like to see remade by Tim Burton:

The Little Mermaid – The Little Mermaid is a classic Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale about a young mermaid who falls in love with a human and makes a deal with an evil witch to give up her life in the sea and become a human herself. We’d like to see Tim transform Johnny Depp as Sebastian the crab (one of the main characters in the Disney version) and cast Meryl Streep as the sea witch.

Beauty and the Beast – Beauty and the Beast was first published by Madame Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot but was famously recreated by Disney in 1991. The fairy tale is about a beautiful girl who falls in love with a beast only to find out he’s really a prince under a spell.

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(CNN) — “Alice in Wonderland” — with its hat-wearing madmen, anxious rabbits and disturbing, smiling cats — would seem to have filmmaker Tim Burton’s name written all over it.

After all, since he started producing and directing films more than 20 years ago, Burton’s name has become synonymous with everything wondrously strange.

Take the delightfully weird world of Roald Dahl’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” that Burton brought to the screen in 2005 (with, it must be noted, very mixed reviews). Or the extreme spirits of “Beetlejuice.” Or the gleeful aliens of “Mars Attacks!”

While the reviews of “Alice” haven’t been overwhelmingly positive, the expectations have been high.

“He’s one of the few filmmakers left where his movie release is an event,” said Kristian Fraga, filmmaker and author of “Tim Burton: Interviews.”

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Thanks to Barrie at Entertainment Weekly for sending us this!

JOHNNY DEPP GOES MAD (HATTER) ON THE COVER OF THIS WEEK’S ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY CELEBRATES ITS 20TH BIRTHDAY WITH A LOOK BACK AT 20 YEARS OF OSCAR

NEW YORK – From the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland to Edward Scissorhands – Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton take a look back at 20 years of collaboration, friendship, and seriously kooky characters. They met twenty years ago as a frustrated young TV star and a wild-haired filmmaker, and since then the duo has worked on quite a few projects together. When they first met to talk about Edward Scissorhands, they both recall caffeine. “All I remember is coffee – a lot of coffee,” says Burton. “In fact, I think I’m still coming down the walls from that. I’d never seen [Depp’s cop show] 21 Jump Street, but meeting Johnny, I could sense that this thing was probably not why he got into acting or where he wanted to go. My impression was that he had something inside of him, but because of the show he was on, people thought of him in a certain way that wasn’t accurate. There’s a painful quality when you grow up and you’re not perceived correctly – and that’s what the character of Edward Scissorhands was about. It was an instinctual thing, but I could see that Johnny was that character.”

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from The Disloyal Subjects of The Mad hatter.

Johnny Depp and the rest of the cast will be walking the red carpet at the Alice In Wonderland World Premiere in London. Watch live coverage on the Alice in Wonderland fan page starting at 12:30 PM EST/ 9:30 AM PST!

The UK’s biggest cinema chains are set to boycott Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, due out on 5 March, because of a dispute with Disney over the release window.

Disney wants to cut the gap between the theatrical opening and the DVD release to just 12 weeks, down from the standard 17 weeks. The big exhibitors refuse to book any film that doesn’t have a guaranteed four-month theatrical run.

If neither side climbs down, the 3D film will not play at any Odeon, Vue or Cineworld site across the country, representing 95% of the UK’s 3D screens.

That means Disney would forfeit a substantial amount of the film’s projected £40m UK box-office gross. It will be tricky for the studio to explain that to Burton, who lives in London and shot Alice In Wonderland largely in Devon and Cornwall.

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Great new article about the Superbowl TV spot from Underwire.

Tim Burton took his new Alice in Wonderland teaser down the rabbit hole in front of 106 million Super Bowl viewers Sunday and emerged with the most memorable trailer of the day.

The Alice clip (embedded above), which zeroed in on the hyper-jolly Mad Hatter (played by Johnny Depp) and the living pig stool for the haughty Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter), topped the catchiest trailer poll compiled by MovieTickets.com. The site recruited more than 550 couch potatoes to rank the clips.

Ridley Scott’s new Robin Hood earned the No. 2 spot, followed by Shutter Island and The Wolfman. Faring poorly: M. Night Shyamalan’s TV spot for The Last Airbender came in behind Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and bested only The Backup Plan in terms of audience impact.

Burton’s 3-D Alice in Wonderland opens March 5.

Helena Bonham Carter has done an exclusive interview and photoshoot session for The Guardian. View the stunning outtakes below and head on over to their site for the full interview.

Helena Bonham Carter fancies a drink. So she orders a double ­espresso. And a glass of fizzy water. And an apple smoothie. She looks rather ­worried when I order just a coffee. “Is that all you want?” she asks gently. Multiple drinking, she explains, is the way to a balanced diet. She admits her theory is not based on pure science.

We are in the cafe just down the road from her north London home. She says she’s got something to show me, and produces a freaky cardboard ­cutout of a little woman with a huge, hydro­encephalised head. “I’ve brought myself. It’s me… in Alice.” Alice In Wonderland is the ­latest movie she has made with her partner, ­director Tim ­Burton. This is their sixth ­collaboration, and ­possibly the grandest ­(it’s certainly the most ­expensive, at an estimated $250m). It’s classic Burton territory – a fairytale world where adulthood is never quite attained, and innocence trails a ghoulish stench. Bonham Carter is playing nasty – a cross between the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts. She holds up her cardboard self and ­addresses it. “She’s got Tourette’s. She just says, ‘Off with their heads!’ all the time.”

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