New Movies Dec. 13-15: Smaug Takes on Katniss

After a quiet week last week on the new-release front, this weekend looks to be the next big stop on the holiday movie train. There are only two new wide releases this weekend, but one of them is a potential blockbuster.

Last week there was only one wide release, "Out of the Furnace," which failed to make any sort of impression on audiences despite its big-name ensemble cast. The thriller starring Christian Bale, Zoe Saldana, Forest Whittaker, Willem Dafoe, Woody Harrelson and others took in only $5.2 million in its opening weekend and was soundly outperformed by holdovers "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and "Frozen."

This week, however, those two hits face competition from "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug." The second part of Peter Jackson's Tolkien-based trilogy probably won't have the same kind of debut that "Catching Fire" had, but predictions are putting its opening-weekend gross in the $80-plus million range, which would easily be enough to take first place for the week.

The other new wide release this week is "A Madea Christmas," the seventh film in Tyler Perry's Madea franchise. The film is predictably not winning the love of critics and is unlikely to be a challenge to the front runners over the weekend, but it will probably play well with devoted fans of the franchise.