Jake Gittes

Legs will be fine with New Year ahead.

Probably has something to do with KTS being near its fourth week of release.

Sure but none of those films' grosses was very surprising to me. Even if some, like TA and Ted, overperformed, I could easily see why that happened. CA was much more pleasantly surprising. It was an excellent film that happened to be a crowdpleaser, contrary to Avengers which was a crowdpleaser that also happened to be an excellent film.

Cloud Atlas' performance was the first since Inception to truly give me some faith in the mass audiences here. Well done.

If memory serves me correct it was just as cold here when Avatar was released but that didn't stop it from anything.

Anti-torture people have been publicly and loudly getting butthurt over this movie for like the past two weeks. That they hadn't seen it themselves wasn't an obstacle, either.

Nothing is going to be officially gone until the holidays are over.

I just hope it can pass FOTR.

Probably would have been the third $100k PTA movie this year if it had opened on Friday.

Spectacular, spectacular

I wasn't a fan of Bae Doona being made to look like an Englishwoman, but thought all the other make-up jobs were fine and, in many cases, outstanding. (Ben Whishaw playing a woman was bad make-up too, but I thought it was deliberate as it perfectly fit the tone of Timothy Cavendish's story). In any case, to me, Cloud Atlas unquestionably deserves all possible awards for its make-up and editing. Two of the most difficult and important aspects of the film and they pulled them off beautifully.

So The Hobbit should have dropped what, 5% on Monday? Compare the percentages, not the numbers.

It'd be perfectly fine. Pretty much the same drop I Am Legend had, and that didn't have as much family appeal.

Exhibitor Relations ‏@ERCboxoffice THE HOBBIT is the #1 movie in North America: $84,617,303

Exhibitor Relations ‏@ERCboxoffice THE HOBBIT is the #1 movie in North America: $84,617,303

It's not going to be a LOTR film, let alone an Avatar, in terms of legs. I'm pretty sure it's going to behave like all other well-received December blockbusters that don't carry those names, and I'd be very, very surprised if it held better than 45%.

Errr why wouldn't it? King Kong, I Am Legend, Tron Legacy and Sherlock Holmes 2 all dropped over 50%.

Not sure I can get enough of Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey in Cabaret.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkRIbUT6u7Q

It's not the matter of good or bad. The next weekend is not exactly a holiday one, mid-Dec openers like KK, TL, SH2, IAL all dropped over 50% there. I think the best case scenario for TH would be a 46% drop of Alice in Wonderland. But it will stabilize after that. IAL dropped 18% on the Dec 28-30 weekend, I think TH could easily have a sub-15% drop to go along with great weekdays.

When it comes to the main categories, I think ZDT is most likely to win Actress, then Screenplay, then BP, then BD. There is at least one other tough contender in the first two categories (Lawrence and QT), Les Mis, Lincoln, SLP, LOP are all more safe BP choices, and Bigelow's recent win will almost definitely prevent her from taking BD again.Right at this point, I think Lincoln wins BP, BD, Actor and Adapted, ZDT wins Actress and Django wins Original. The only bad thing about that scenario would be SLP missing out on all actual awards, but if Chastain and Tony Kushner's work is truly worth it, I won't lose any sleep over it.

Strange that WB didn't even round it up to $85m for the sake of a nice estimate figure, but anyway. Decent number, not really bad but not great either. As for the total, I'll be glad if it at least passes FOTR and maybe takes a crack at AIW/TTT. Any result over $350m should be considered great after this.

I know the same has been said a lot about AUJ, but I'd be very surprised if it didn't. I think it can jump to a $45m Friday and, from there on, to a $105-110m OW. I'd hesitate to predict more though.A lot is going to depend on Smaug, I think - if they really up the stakes as far as the confrontation with him is concerned and indicate so in the promos, a $100m OW will be substantially easier to do.

Seems good for at least $85m on OW and a $325m total. Underwhelming relative to expectations, yes, but still a definite success. Hopefully The Desolation of Smaug pulls off a $100m Dec OW, the WOM should be there for it, and if they nail and successfully sell Smaug in the trailers, they'll be in great shape for a better run than this. I also wonder if PJ is going to take notice of the one widespread criticism of AUJ and give TDOS a tighter edit, perhaps bringing it under 150 minutes. I can't imagine the movie being hurt in any way if he did that.Wouldn't be shocked if AUJ made its way to $350m if it really takes advantage of the holidays, although over 370 seems to be a stretch at this point. So yeah I'd say the very early range is 325-370, and if closer, then 335-360. Let's see how it develops. Personally I predicted 123/430 several weeks ago and started leaning towards 105-110/380-410 in the past several days, so yeah it won't meet those expectations. But, like I said, I don't find anything terribly disappointing about its run and its prospects so far.

If either Di Caprio, Jackson or Hoffman miss out on a nomination because of Arkin... talk about yet another one in a long line of Oscar fuck-ups.