Welcome to the Box Office Oracle–where new movies are pitted against each other for box office supremacy and only one can claim victory. Each week, I will be doing a quick box office prediction for all wide new releases. Sorry, obscure indie films I’ve never heard of, but you aren’t going to be discussed here unless you become big.

This is also something I’m going to keep as free of “controversy” if I can. This means that if, I don’t know, Jon Voight is voicing an evil government agent talking bear in a DreamWorks movie, I’m not going to make a bunch of Trump jokes. If a Tom Cruise actioner comes out, I’m not going to make a bunch of Scientology cracks. You get the idea. I want for this to be kept fun and simple.

So, without any further discussion, let’s get into this weekend’s solo big release, Abominable.

Abominable

Originally titled Everest, the latest from DreamWorks Animation tells the story of a teenage girl who encounters a baby snow monster and goes on an epic journey to return him home. Along the way, she must deal with agents of some sort who want to capture the yeti for presumably selfish purposes, and she goes through some self-discovery of herself as well, particularly when it comes to her talent for playing the violin.

Like Kung Fu Panda 3, Abominable is a co-production with China, with Pearl Studios (formally called Oriental DreamWorks) sharing credit on the title card here. What this means is that the animation is essentially done all over again for the Chinese version so that the character mouth movements will work perfectly instead of doing a dub alone. Whether or not that’s money wisely spent or if it has any impact whatsoever on box office returns is up for debate, but China can be pretty restrictive in terms of which American animated movies they allow to play there, so whatever works, right?

Tone-wise, marketing suggests that Abominable is pretty much How to Train Your Dragon but with a snow monster, with absolutely beautiful animation and the appropriate amount of heart-string tugging. Critics are on board for the most part with a 77% “fresh” ratting over at Rotten Tomatoes, which may not be spectacular, but is still quite solid. Having said that, The Addams Family appears to be faring much better in term of the audience awareness department, and that film opens in only two weeks, which doesn’t give Abominable the family marketplace to itself for very long. Still, with no other movies opening this weekend, it’s going to take the top spot by default at around $26 million.

Why Your Fortune Cookie Tells You To Go: DreamWorks Animation has been doing pretty well lately. Even The Boss Baby was a lot better than its reputation might suggest.

Why Your Fortune Cookie Tells You To Stay Away: We’ve already had two animated movies about yetis within the last year, which I guess makes Abominable the conclusion to an unofficial film trilogy.

Today’s Lucky Lotto Numbers: $26 million debut; $89 million finish.

Other fun stuff…

* I love the use of music in the Abominable trailer. It definitely elevates the emotional factor of everything and even gives me a few chills (see what I did there? Because it’s a movie about a yeti? Never mind).

* How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World remains my pick for the best movie of 2019.

* Given that we have like no comparisons for it, it will be interesting to see what kind of legs Downton Abbey will display. My money leans towards it being frontloaded, but it’s been having some good weekdays, so it could be around for a while.

* There’s smoking in virtually every episode of Downton Abbey the series but none at all in the movie, which speaks volumes about the MPAA’s priorities.

* Ad Astra is solid for at least its first two thirds, but it’s too bad the ending is a tad on the anti-climatic side (but hey, space baboon!)

* Abominable is only the solo release of the weekend because of Universal pulling The Hunt from their release schedule entirely, so who knows if I’ll ever end up talking about that film in this column.

* What will you be doing this weekend? Baby yetis? Downton again? Sound off in the comments!