It may be meaner and crueler and more reliant on full frontal male nudity than the original, but The Hangover Part II is on-track to make an obscene amount of money this holiday weekend.

As usual, the projected five-day weekend grosses are all over the map (we've seen estimates as low as $80 million and as high as $160 million), but midnight screenings of the film Thursday grossed $10.4 million across 2,600 theaters. (For those not up one on their midnight screening history, Nikki Finke says that's a"big, big number".)

Then there's the film's ambitious foreign rollout plan to consider. Earlier this week in the Los Angeles Times, Ben Fritz detailed Warner Bros' aggressive foreign distribution strategy, which includes opening the film in 40 foreign countries today, "[a] rarity for R-rated comedies as the genre's culturally specific jokes often don't play well overseas." That wasn't the case with the first Hangover, which grossed $190 million abroad. To match that number, Fritz says the studio needs   a repeat performance in [western Europe]" coupled with "growth in Latin America and Russia," expanding markets that still "have yet to embrace an R-rated American comedy."

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Ray Gustini