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Here, the gang has been fortuitously placed in a month bereft of a lot of high-profile blockbuster content, especially any aimed at children, and with school still out, the film could draw in reasonable box office week after week well into September. The original The Nut Job used roughly the same game plan to finish with $64 million over the cold early months of 2014, and it's hard to see the sequel escaping its range in either direction - no sudden upwards blasts on the one hand, no drops to rock-bottom on the other. Nutty as you may be, nature likes balance.

Opening weekend: $17 million / Total gross: $63 million

5. Kidnap (August 4th)
At least as advertised, Kidnap comes to us from the realm of thrillers about desperate every-persons who must fight like hell to save a beloved relative - a child or spouse, most times (for what would be the point of taking an unloved cousin or a boorish uncle?). This is the tradition of Breakdown, that excellent 1997 film with Kurt Russell, Kathleen Quinlan, and the late, great, J. T. Walsh, Flightplan, with Jodie Foster very good as a distraught mother, and of course, the film everyone will think of, the one where Liam Neeson bellowed after his daughter across European capitals.

Here, Halle Berry gets a nice starring role. It is her first, believe it or not, since she headlined The Call, a kidnapping-themed thriller that came out of more or less nowhere in 2013 to open with $17 million and finish with $51 million, a job well done, despite a questionable third act. Kidnap might play much the same way, especially as the need for counter-programming gives a lot of August's denizens very unexpected legs, attracting enough viewers looking for a B-movie experience. As just such an option, Kidnap looks reasonable enough, even though the film does have the kind of trailer that leaves you with the sneaking feeling that the child's kidnapping is all a hallucinatory experience confined to Ms. Berry's mind (although I actually don't think that happens). 47 Meters Down, another relatively out-of-nowhere thriller, finished with a solid early 40s take two months ago, and there's no reason Kidnap shouldn't encore.

Opening weekend: $14 million / Total gross: $43 million

6. Logan Lucky (August 18th)
In 2013, with gusto in his heart and sweat on his brow, Steven Soderbergh stood before a weeping nation and announced in no uncertain terms that he had, indeed, now retired from the sacred craft of film directing. Never, he intoned in baritone tones, will a theatrical feature film again bear the words "Directed by Steven Soderbergh". It was goodbye.

Time passed, the tears have dried from some of our eyes, and four years later there is a film coming to town that claims Soderbergh as its director (personally, I don't believe it). This film, this pretender, is Logan Lucky, a crime caper which brings us a group of boors or simpletons or what have you to heist out a Coca-Cola NASCAR race for a lot of money. They have perhaps been inspired by taking in a screening of Zach Galifianakis' Masterminds, which covered basically the same ground last year, except one, this isn't a true story, and two, its reviews are more like 90% Fresh than 34% (although, personally, I think quality is overrated; who needs it?).

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