New Movies September 16: 'Blair Witch' and 'Bridget Jones'

We're halfway through September already, and the fall movie season is beginning to come into its own. This week, three new wide releases come to theaters and compete for the top spot. However, there's a strong holdover from last week that might spoil the newcomers' plans.

The first of the week's new movies is Blair Witch, a sequel to 1999's horror sensation The Blair Witch Project. It's not easy to predict box office performance for this one. Critics' reviews of the film are lukewarm, but low-budget horror films have been, on the whole, doing very well so far this year. Predictions for Blair Witch's box-office performance are all over the place, ranging from $10 million to $23 million for the weekend.

The week's second new release, Bridget Jones's Baby, is another sequel and another difficult one to predict. Aimed at an older female audience, this one is likely to take in $12 to $15 million.

The one new wide release certain to be out of the top-spot hunt is Snowden, a drama starring Joseph Gorden-Levitt as the infamous government whistleblower. Expect this one to earn $10 million or less.

The real question for the weekend is whether Blair Witch will be able to overtake last week's number-one movie, Sully. That one earned an impressive $35 million last week, and a strong hold would put its earnings right in line with the predictions for Blair Witch.