OK the weekend box office isn’t over yet, but Comic Con may have its second movie curse in a row.

Last year, Scott Pilgrim was plastered on a large building at Comic Con. There was a premiere of the film, though not at the grand scale of this year’s marked film, and there were articles in local and national papers about this supposed sleeper hit. When all was said and done Pilgrim didn’t perform too well.

This year the IT film was Cowboys and Aliens. The same building had a large poster of the film. There was the huge Hollywood premiere, complete with a red carpet. You had stars like Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig and heavyweight producers like Spielberg and Ron Howard. The film opened the week after Comic Con, ensuring the buzz coming out of the convention would spill into the general public.

With all the hype, Cowboys and Aliens may lose the box office battle to . . . the Smurfs movie?

As of now, according to Deadline.com, the Friday estimate is Cowboys and Aliens getting $12.99 million while the Smurfs got $13.29 million. Now it is possible Cowboys and Aliens could win the weekend battle, but the initial estimate of it dominating the box office, especially with the weak reviews of The Smurfs, look incredibly inflated.

Right now it looks like the $45 million opening weekend projected for Cowboys and Aliens may up being under $40 million and The Smurfs might pull a shocker and win the weekend. Even if the Smurfs pull in a close second, the executives will see the high price tag and high roll out for Cowboys and Aliens as a waste.

This might have some repercussions for Comic Con. No one with the purse strings are really going to thing Comic Con will be a curse for the prestige films, but having two years in a row with high profile films, with the cost of promotion at the event, losing badly at the box office might make them think twice about high end promotion at the event.

Another film to look at that might be on shaky ground is the Total Recall remake. It had a display at the same area, near the trolley line, where such ‘hits’ as the revamped Knightrider and Green Hornet displayed their futuristic cars. They brought on the dancing girls, they had the trinkets and there was a great ‘ah’ factor in looking at the vehicles, yet both the TV show Knightrider and Green Hornet did less than expected. Will the curse of this spot hit Total Recall?

Update: I did what executives always do when their spot on theories turn out to be incorrect; check with the very people their product is targeted at. I asked a number of colleagues, who are movie lovers, which films they were looking forward to seeing this weekend. One, who has children, definitely went with The Smurfs. The other, not a parent, didn't think either would be in his viewing plans but did say, despite that Cowboys and Aliens had more advertising, that Smurfs was a well known property because of the cartoon and would probably bring more families in.

Those comments, in a non-scientific way, answers a lot of questions about the modern movie going public, especially during the summer. The co-workers I talked with have the pay-per-view movie services, be it Netflix, Blockbuster or the other services. Movies, in a lot of respects, have become events because of cost, and people are less willing to just pack up and go to the movies when the cost is high. Because of the high turnover in films, waiting a few months to see a mediocre film in the comfort of the home makes more sense that packing up the kids, driving to the theater and paying up to $100 for a family of 4 to see something that is average. Now, the Smurfs might not be high entertainment, but it's something people are aware of. In the parlance of movie lingo, Cowboys and Aliens is 'high concept' because it isn't based on a known property like a well known comic book, television show or previous movie.

Even with the Smurf presence, the movie will do decent business, but the estimates given for the film before the premiere were well over the actual numbers. With the amount of star power behind the movie it could cause executives to question spending so much money on other 'high concept' pictures.

Update – 8/8/2011 – Well the box office for last week had Cowboys and Indians barely beating out Smurfs by under 1 million dollars, but the box office this week tells a strikingly different story. Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a movie estimated to make around 35 million, ended the weekend with 54 million, which would have been the numbers Cowboys and Aliens were looking for. With an even bigger blow, Smurfs ended up in second place this week with 21 million with Cowboys and Aliens coming in third with 16 million.