2012’s box office ended with a record-breaking total of $10.83 billion; but as of Wednesday we wiped that slate clean for another year. In a repeat of 2012, the first weekend of the New Year features just one nationwide release and – also like 2012 – that release belongs to the horror genre. Texas Chainsaw 3D, the sixth feature in the “Texas Chainsaw” franchise, opened in 2,654 locations at 10 pm on Thursday. With a first-day estimate of $10.2 million, Texas Chainsaw 3D should top $20 million by Sunday. That’s far short of the $33.7 million The Devil Inside earned at this time last year; though anything over $15 million would beat industry expectations. A debut north of $20 million would also be enough to give Texas Chainsaw 3D the win over December’s holdovers. After three weekends at number one, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is expected to fall to third place, with Django Unchained in second. Projections are very close among this weekend’s top four titles, however, so check back tomorrow to see how 2013’s first box office winds up.

This week on Blu-ray Kristen Stewart’s summer fairy tale hits home video, James Cameron’s epic love story gets a multi-disc upgrade, and Vampires of a different sort come home.  Briefly:

• Snow White and the Huntsman (Two-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet)
• Titanic (Four-Disc Combo: Blu-ray 3D / Blu-ray / Digital Copy)
• The Big Bang Theory: The Complete Fifth Season
• The Vampire Diaries: The Complete Third Season
• The Devil Inside

Hit the jump for more details.

With the horror-franchise Paranormal Activity going strong (the three movies released so far have brought in an excess of half-a-billion dollars) and recent religious horror films doing well in the box office (The Devil Inside), the Paranormal Activity folks are turning their attention to a film that explores Catholic-based paranormal mythology. The twist on this offshoot is that they’re targeting the Latino community, an increasingly important market for movie studios. While the horror flick will feature a Latino cast, the film will not be in Spanish. Paranormal Activity producers Jason Blum and Oren Peli will reunite with writer Christopher Landon, who will write and direct the project for Paramount.  Hit the jump for more info.

Even with Saturday’s family trade and higher ticket prices, Disney’s 3D re-issue of Beauty and the Beast could not catch Contraband this weekend. From its 2,863 locations Universal’s R-rated drama took in an estimated $24.1 million – a figure well above early expectations for the Mark Wahlberg vehicle.  The other BIG news is the changing fortunes of last weekend’s number one film, The Devil Inside.  Estimates have taken the film from number six – down to number eleven – and back up to number seven all within an hour.  We’re hoping to get it right this with this one but, keep in mind, it’s all estimates until Monday morning…

If 2011 closed as a bit of a downer, 2012 continues to surprise with its robust (early) box office performances.  Last week Paramount’s The Devil Inside caught most of us off-guard with its big number one finish; this weekend it was Universal’s turn with Contraband.  The R-rated thriller earned an estimated $8.7 million from 2,863 locations on Friday – a first place debut that puts it on track for a weekend 25% higher than expected.  In second place, Disney’s 3D reissue of Beauty and the Beast took in $5.6 million from 2,625 venues and should reach $23 million by the end of the four-day MLK Holiday weekend.  Warner Brothers’ Joyful Noise was the final new title of the weekend, not counting TWC’s The Iron Lady which expanded into 802 theatres and finished Friday in eighth-place.  Noise earned $3.3 million from its 2,863 locations for a third-place tie with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.  Rounding out the top five, The Devil Inside was down a giant 87% from its debut.  With the film’s awful reviews, expect it to relinquish its current slot to Sherlock Holmes 2 by Sunday. Details and analysis tomorrow.

So when a movie is so bad that fully three-quarters of its paying audience ridicules it, critics pan it and it receives a rating of, currently, 6% at Rotten Tomatoes, it’s safe to call it a flop, right? What about when that movie cost around $1 million to make and managed to take in over $30 million on its opening weekend? That’s the case with The Devil Inside, an exorcism tale that’s apparently so bad that audiences just have to see it. While that’s a bold marketing technique to apply, Sierra/Affinity and the Incentive Filmed Entertainment fund are hoping that the next iteration from writer/director William Brent Bell and writer Matthew Peterman is at least as financially successful and hopefully more critically well received. The partnership has announced that they will finance and produce the as of yet untitled project by the duo. For now, production is scheduled to begin in April in Romania using a similar style of filmmaking applied to another horror mythology. Hit the jump for more details.

This has got to be a strange weekend for the makers of The Devil Inside. The film is posed to far exceed box office prognostications grossing upward 30 million its first weekend. To put things into perspective: the film reportedly cost only a mil to make (though that’s not counting print and marketing – which puts the cost around 15 or so mil; but still it’s obviously a HUGE financial success for Paramount.) However – no one* really likes the movie. In fact most seem to downright hate it (an “F” Cinemascore, audiences across the country booing the ending, more Twitter-related hate than ever seemed possible within 140 characters…). I can’t quite remember the last time one movie created such a universal sense of vitriol.

So the chance to speak with the creative team behind the smash-hit-but-universally-loathed (has there ever been a movie this disliked but also posed to make 4x its budget back?) was too good an opportunity to pass up. In the following interview with writer/director William Brent Bell, co-writer Matthew Peterman and producer Morris Paulson – the trio speak out about the glut of found footage films, backlash from the church and the most controversial ending to a film this year (also – the only ending yet to a film this year). For the full interview, hit the jump.

We’ve got a very interesting case at the box office this weekend. Paramount’s horror pic The Devil Inside definitively won the weekend with a big $34.5 million take, but reaction to the film from both critics and audiences has been extremely negative. Not only does it sit at 7% on Rotten Tomatoes, but the film earned an “F” CinemaScore, which gauges how the film plays with general audiences. It’s already becoming infamous for a horrendous ending, but audiences turned up in droves making the little $1 million horror movie a bona fide hit. Hit the jump for more.

The Devil Inside is a critical punching bag, but Paramount knew what they were doing with the marketing with this cheap $1 million acquisition.  The horror movie grossed $16.9 million opening day on its way to a potential $30 million weekend.  The Devil Inside has already become infamous for a terrible ending, so it’s unlikely this will hold up over the coming weeks, but a great start might be enough for the low-budget effort.  The top 5 is rounded out by the big holiday movies, with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows leading the charge.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo continues to find an audience three weeks into its run—it may yet hit the $100 million mark.  War Horse came in at #5 while passing $50 million.

Paramount has changed up the release dates on a couple of its upcoming films: the Eddie Murphy dramedy A Thousand Words and the Italian-set, horror/thriller The Devil Inside. Here are the details of the changes:

• A Thousand Words moves from January 13th to March 23rd, 2012. The change now pits the film against Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games
• The Devil Inside moves up from February 24th to January 6th, 2012. The film will now go head-to-head with the Sam Raimi-produced horror/thriller The Possession starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Kyra Sedgwick

News of the release date changes come courtesy of THR whose report astutely points out that Paramount’s reasoning for moving A Thousand Words most likely stems from Murphy’s gig hosting the 2012 Oscars on February 27th and the near guaranteed publicity it will bring to the pic. A Thousand Words is directed by Brian Robbins (Norbit) and sees Murphy play a man who learns that he only has 1,000 more words to speak prior to his demise. As for The Devil Inside, the documentary-style film from writer/director William Brent Bell was made on a six-figure budget and follows a woman who becomes involved in a series of unauthorized exorcisms.

Paramount has announced release dates for two upcoming handled by the studio’s specialty labels.  According to Box Office Mojo, Paramount Vantage will debut Like Crazy in limited release on October 28.  Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlie Bewley, and Alex Kingston star in the romantic drama that won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.  Drake Doremus (Douchebag) directed the movie from a script he co-wrote with Ben York Jones.

Writer/director William Brent Bell (Stay Alive) shot The Devil Inside last year in Rome and Bucharest with stars Fernanda Andrade, Simon Quarterman, Evan Helmuth, and Suzan Crowley. Paramount’s Insurge Pictures, a division devoted to low-budget horror films, recently acquired the exorcism tale for wide release on February 24, 2012.

Read the official synopses for both films after the jump.