Corona | Coming Attractions

James Cameron's blue-skinned aliens defeated Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Victorian detective during the Christmas Day weekend. Avatar emerged with a towering $75 million dollars in estimated ticket sales from Friday to Sunday, propelling its total domestic gross to $212.2 million dollars in ten days of release. There had been some belief that both Sherlock Holmes, which opened with $65.3m over the weekend, and Avatar would both go over the $70 million dollar mark in the same weekend, forging a new box office record. Alas, the cranberry-fueled dreams of studio management will have to be put on hold for another holiday.

Third place is held by Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel with a weekend take of $50.2m (for a five day total of $77m.) Combined the top three movies earned $190.5 million dollars. That is a new record so let's not shed too many tears for the studios, especially 20th Century Fox which has released the Alvin sequel and Avatar. (That said, Warner Bros. just crossed the $2 billion dollar mark in ticket sales for the year, the first time ever that a movie studio has climbed that high. I said no tears!)

Meryl Streep proved that she still has it in her to draw audiences away from the blockbusters. It's Complicated, her new romantic comedy targeted for middle-aged folk, earned Universal a nice sum of $22.1m on its opening weekend. In fifth spot was The Blind Side with another $11.1m added to its already Everest-esque $184.3m total. Up in the Air expanded its release on another 1,700+ screens and saw its box office take flight ($11.7m new, $24.5m total) but Disney's The Princess and the Frog continues to has turbulence ($8.6m new, $63.3m total, the movie's budget $100m.) Miramax's please-give-us-many-Oscar-nominations musical Nine also expanded on 1,400+ screens but that $5.5m take kinda sucks, doesn't it Harvey?

Proving that if you make it, even if it's crap, people will still come is Sony's Did You Hear About the Morgans? which added another $5m to its $15m total. And finally in tenth place we have Clint Eastwood's Invictus ($4.3m, $23.3m total). People, if you had to choose between Invictus and Did You Hear About the Morgans?, I hope it was an easy choice for you.