WILL BEAUTY AND THE BEAST RETURN AT #1?

There’s a strong possibility that the belle of the box-office ball over the Martin Luther King holiday will be Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast — all decked out in digital 3D stateliness. The 3D conversion is said to have cost the studio about $10 million, and box-office pundits are conservatively forecasting that it should earn twice that amount over the long weekend. (They were caught redfaced last September when another Disney 3D conversion, The Lion King, returned with $30.2 million.) About $20 million is what they’re saying the new Mark Wahlburg thriller Contraband is also likely to make. But Joyful Noise, the musical featuring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton is not expected to make much noise at all — probably ending up with around $10-15 million.