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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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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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.”

For Depp, he wasn’t sure he had already won the role in that meeting. “I was convinced there was no way I’d get it. Everyone in this town wanted to play that role – including Michael Jackson,” he says. “I’d had a great meeting with Tim and left zipping on coffee and chewing on a spoon, but then I didn’t really hear much for a few weeks. When I got the call saying ‘You’re Edward Scissorhands,’ I was just elated. I knew how important it would be,” he says. “It was a big risk for tim to take on some TV actor. With 21 Jump Street, they were trying to make me this thing, this product, and I couldn’t deal with it. When Scissorhands came, I knew even if immediately afterwards I was booted out of Hollywood and was pumping gas or working contruction again, at least I was on solid ground. I was exactly where I needed to be. And even if that was all I’d done, I was fine. I knew what road I wanted to go on, but Tim pushed me onto that road.”

Four years later, they reunited for Ed Wood. When asked about what he was feeling about his career at that point, Depp says “In terms of Hollywood, people were still wondering, ‘Why won’t he carry a gun and f— the girl?’ That’s all they wanted me to do: carry a gun and nail some broad, you know. I’m not opposed to that, but I thought there might have been other things to investigate.”

Depp and Burton share a similar sensibility. “There’s a similar respect for the absurd and things slightly left of center,” says Depp. “I’ve just always understood what Tim’s looking for, and he trusts me to go out there and do the stupid s— I do.” Burton responds “Like dress up as a scary clown. [Laughs] Over the years we’ve learned that we have similar tastes. We both like old horror movies. We talk about TV performers that scared us as children. There’s a lot of common ground.”

And for their latest project, Alice in Wonderland, Johnny Depp won’t even be able to watch it – at least not in 3-D. “I’m actually unable to see 3-D,” says Depp. “I’ve got a weird thing where I don’t see properly out of my left eye, so I truly can’t see 3-D. So I have an excuse [not to watch myself] this time.” (Cover Story, Page 26)
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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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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 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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Disney has been hitting the world with a full-on promotional assault for “Alice in Wonderland.” And it’s no wonder. You’ve got the always-potent team-up of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. You’ve got one of the studio’s most cherished franchises being revisited. And you’ve got this highly anticipated beast hitting theaters in IMAX 3-D presentations, right on the heels of the record-breaking success of “Avatar.” Of course they’re trying get us excited!

In the midst of the many trailers and images and posters and the like, precious few facts about how the whole production came together have been shared. There are a handful of featurettes, but it’s just a taste. There’s a ton of trivia yet to be revealed. Well we’ve spoken with Disney and secured a few tidbits for you to enjoy, just some fun facts about the work behind the scenes on “Alice.” You can find them all after the break.

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“ALICE IN WONDERLAND”: 29 DAYS

Are you ready for a trip down the rabbit hole? Tim Burton, Johnny Depp and Disney are adding a strange new chapter to the Lewis Carroll classic with “Alice in Wonderland,” a film that presents a young woman who finds herself in the world of the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and the Red Queen. She is welcomed as a returning visitor — but is she in fact the same Alice who roamed the trippy realm as a child? Time will tell. Here at the Hero Complex we’re counting down to the film’s March 5 release with daily coverage. Today it’s a conversation with Mia Wasikowska, the 20-year-old Aussie newcomer who plays the title role.

Geoff Boucher: The film is called “Alice in Wonderland,” but really this is neither a pure adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s writings nor a remake of previous films. This is a whole new story, correct?

Mia Wasikowska: It’s a completely different and new story, but it has a lot of the same characters in it. It has the same feel of the original stories, but it’s really fun to explore a story that goes further and imagines what all these characters would be like several years down the tracks. Alice doesn’t have a recollection of her first visit there. She’s gone back and is discovering this world and finding herself again in this place that she doesn’t even remember.

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