‘Eclipse’ is expected to remain No. 1 at the box office

Universal Pictures’ debut computer-animation effort and 20th Century Fox’s bid to revive its “Predator” franchise are expected to have good openings this weekend, but “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” figures to once again be the winner at the box office.

The animated “Despicable Me” is set to open to about $35 million in ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada, according to people who have seen pre-release audience polling, while “Predators” will probably start off with about $25 million.

Both would be good, though not sensational, debuts for the movies — particularly in relation to their production costs.

People who closely follow box-office results are expecting “Eclipse” to gross about $40 million this weekend, similar to what “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” did on its second weekend in theaters last year. In addition, the latest film in the “Twilight” series opens in 23 foreign markets this weekend, including France, Britain and South Korea.

Distributor Summit Entertainment had hoped “Eclipse” would surpass the previous “Twilight” movie on weekdays because it’s playing in the summer, when many young fans are out of school and able to go to matinees. That hasn’t happened so far.

Ticket sales for “Eclipse” on Tuesday and Wednesday were $10.6 million and $8.8 million, respectively, compared with $11.3 million and $14.2 million on the same days of the week that followed the “New Moon” release last year.

“Eclipse” has grossed $195.7 million in its first eight days, compared with $205.8 million for “New Moon” in the same period.

“Despicable Me” looks like it will perform well, particularly compared with other recent animated projects that couldn’t bank on the momentum of being a sequel and weren’t from animation powerhouses DreamWorks Animation or Pixar. Disney Animation Studios, which has been in a box-office slump, saw its “The Princess and the Frog” open to $24 million in December, while Sony Pictures Animation’s “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs” opened to $30 million in September.

“Despicable Me” is the first movie from Illumination Entertainment, a company founded by former Fox executive Chris Meledandri to produce family films for Universal. “Despicable Me” cost about $70 million, less than half the cost of Pixar and DreamWorks animated films.

Like “Cloudy,” “Despicable Me” is being released in 3-D, which is expected to boost its box-office potential: Universal booked 1,551 theaters with 3-D screens for the movie.

That’s about 800 fewer theaters than those booked for recent movies such as “Shrek Forever After,” which opened when there were no other 3-D pictures competing for viewers. “Despicable Me” is being released amid a 3-D traffic jam in theaters, with “The Last Airbender” and “Toy Story 3” still playing.

It has been 20 years since “Predator 2,” although the human-hunting aliens also appeared in “Alien vs. Predator” movies in 2004 and 2007. Fox’s revival of the series was produced by Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios and cost the studio and its financing partner, Dune Entertainment, about $40 million.

Polling indicates that the new movie will draw a primarily male crowd evenly mixed between younger men who are new to “Predators” and older ones who remember the 1987 original starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

ben.fritz@latimes.com