Weekend Box Office: Denzel Washington Will Make ‘The Equalizer’ #1, Can Dylan O’Brien In ‘The Maze Runner’ Fight Off ‘The Boxtrolls’?

Hollywood is not an industry for as much risk as it used to be. These days studios arguably opt against any one specific actor's ability to draw a crowd. Unless you're Denzel Washington. Even with films that get lackluster reviews in terms of story, critics and audiences alike love the Academy Award winning actor so much so that they'll probably drive "The Equalizer" to debut at number one this weekend. As for the number two spot, "The Boxtrolls" has the potential to be a crowd pleaser given the lack of family films recently, but there's still a good chance that "Teen Wolf" star Dylan O'Brien will keep "The Maze Runner" ahead of the stop-motion animated film.

On the set of "The Equalizer," Denzel Washington spoke to Hitfix about doing films for the sake of sequel potential: "You don't have a sequel without a good film, so there's no point in thinking about sequels. I'm just trying to be a part of making the best film that I can."

It would appear that the "Flight" actor is remaining humble despite how much people admire him. "The Equalizer" debuts this weekend and is expected to take the top spot in the box office. Box Office Mojo reports, "In the past decade, Denzel has starred in 11 movies which were released into at least 1,800 theaters; all 11 of those took in north of $20 million on opening weekend." Bolstered by decent reviews, they expect the film to make $32 million this weekend.

The number two spot is a little bit trickier to predict as "The Boxtrolls" could potentially outperform "The Maze Runner" in its second weekend in theaters. The problem will however be a question of whether the brightly colored stop-motion film can draw the same fans of films like "Coraline" and "Corpse Bride." Box Office Mojo has tentatively predicted that Dylan O'Brien will keep "The Maze Runner" in the number two spot this weekend with a gross of $15.6 million over the weekend, but "The Boxtrolls" will be close behind at $14 million.

In the weekend before the first major Oscar contender "Gone Girl" is released, audiences will have three age group films to choose from, but the name Denzel Washington will probably grab anyone over the Rated-R cutoff age.