ANOTHER CASE OF BOX-OFFICE BLAHS?

For moviegoers, the only good thing about this weekend’s movie lineup is that they probably won’t have to search for a decent parking space around their local theater. Two new films, Dolphin Tale 2 and No Good Deed, are both expected to open with around $15-20 million, and it’s a toss-up as to which film will take first place. Online ticket sellers Fandango said that the two movies were selling about the same number of tickets. No Good Deed is a thriller from Sony’s Screen Gems starring Idris Elba and Taraji P. Henson. Elba plays an escaped convict who invades Henson’s home. (Almost as if it had been contrived as a publicity stunt, three convicts, including a 19-year-old who killed three students at a suburban Cleveland high school in 2012, escaped from a prison in Lima, Ohio on Thursday and were captured early this morning.) It was not screened for critics — always a bad sign for a movie’s prospects. The "2" in Dolphin Tale 2 could very well stand for 2D to distinguish it from the original 2011 film, which opened in 3D with $19 million. That’s just about the only thing that distinguishes it from the first, critics say. But with a dearth of family films on theater marquees, it could produce about the same amount of opening-weekend revenue, despite the lack of a 3D surcharge. Meanwhile, Guardians of the Galaxy is expected to become the first — and probably the only — film of 2014 to cross the $300-million mark at the domestic box office. Guardians, which had taken in $297.2 million by Wednesday, is expected to add another $6-8 million over the weekend.