Monday's Box Office Roundup: Good 'Night'

Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope Santa brought you everything you wanted. In my case, despite all the lovely presents, he did NOT happen to bring me any particular accuracy in my box office prediction. Here's what I thought the top five might look like:

1. Night at the Museum
2. Rocky Balboa
3. The Pursuit of Happyness
4. Eragon
5. We Are Marshall

And here's what the actual top five looked like (though because of the long holiday weekend, these are estimates only):

1. Night at the Museum - $30.8 million
2. The Pursuit of Happyness - $15 million
3. Rocky Balboa - $12.5 million
4. The Good Shepherd - $10 million
5. Charlotte's Web - $8 million

Get the full box office report here.

So as it turns out, I got the top movie right, but not much else. 'Night at the Museum' had a monster opening, with parents and kids flocking to see Ben Stiller being harassed by dinosaurs, cowboys and marauding Mongolians. Keep in mind that Stiller, a member of the Frat Pack, has his own fans, so it's probable that quite a few non-parental units contributed to that $30.8 million. But once again, Christmas weekend proved lucrative for family films: 'Charlotte's Web' sneaked past its fellow sophomore flick, 'Eragon' (which finished sixth with $7.15 million), to grab the number five slot.

'Eragon,' by the way, may be one of the bigger disappointments of the season. It had a huge dropoff from last weekend's $23 million, meaning nobody's seeing it besides fans of the book. Well, not everybody can be Peter Jackson. And speaking of disappointments, the football movie 'We Are Marshall' earned only $6.6 million to come in seventh. I guess people were either sick of inspirational sports movies (in 2006 we've had 'Invincible,' 'Gridiron Gang' and 'Glory Road,' among others) or thought the death of an entire team in a fiery plane crash was a little too depressing for Christmas. Or, anyone interested in football may have been watching the Texans upset the Colts instead.

The surprise of the top five -- to me, anyway -- was 'The Good Shepherd,' which showed that even a long, serious movie can do well if it's got a stellar cast and some Oscar buzz. Good for Bobby De Niro, I say. I did read one article suggesting that people may have been confused into thinking 'The Good Shepherd' was a religious movie, which would be funny if true. "Saaay, Angelina Jolie is kind of, uh, racy for the Virgin Mary, isn't she?" Still, whatever the draw, we're ramping up into awards season, so expect a growing curiosity for contenders like 'Shepherd' and Clint Eastwood's 'Letters from Iwo Jima,' which opened in only five theaters and earned a decent $76,000.

Enough with the jibber-jabber; on to the standings. Congrats to to liesse00, who was the big winner this week, picking all five top movies correctly. It's a Christmas miracle! Or, liesse00 is just really smart. And don't think I haven't noticed that I am now only one point in the lead. Zsxxx03, I'm watching my back. (Click here to see what everyone guessed.)

Thanks to everyone for playing along -- hope you're having a lovely holiday weekend and season. And to all, a good night.

Scoring: One point for every top-five movie, two points for every correct placement, and one extra point for the No. 1 movie. Note: Starting next week, anyone who hasn't played in three weeks will get cut from the standings. That is, you can miss up to two weeks in a row, but after that, you'll lose your spot in the overall rankings. Sorry! These lists don't format themselves, you know.

Name - This Week/Overall

1. Patricia - 6 points/106 points
2. zsxxx03 - 10 points/105 points
3. chrisnbn - 6 points/96 points
4. Mario/crzydcguy84 - 7 points/86 points
5. Bubba8193 -12 points/69 points
   
6. mrheenster - 0 points/64 points
   
7. Tangoeco - 10 points/62 points
   
8. Isaac/laraeruiz - 8 points/54 points
   
9. bostons leppard - 6 points/37 points
   
10. liesse00 - 16 points/35 points
    
11. drurd2006 - 0 points/27 points
    
12. ajdear - 0 points/25 points
    
13. dylsan - 4 points/18 points
    
14. jecmen24 - 0 points/17 points
15. Brldisteach - 0 points/12 points
    
16. Filmman36 - 0 points/12 points
    
17. malc004 - 0 points/12 points
    
18. Evilone1414 - 3 points/12 points
19. Quealnyc - 0 points/12 points
    
20. ssitalionstallion - 0 points/11 points
21. Tennesseehearts1- 0 points/10 points
22. Lisalr1 - 0 points/7 points
23. Anthony - 0 points/6 points
    
24. Jason Williams - 6 points/6 points
25. Ryan - 0 points/6 points
26. Jonathn - 6 points/6 points
27. johnny x - 6 points/6 points
28. scott - 6 points/6 points
29. Urban Mama - 0 points/6 points
30. Ideswe2 - 0 points/5 points
31. Andrew - 0 points/4 points
32. Ashlee - 0 points/4 points
33. Ernest - 0 points/4 points
34. Jessica - 0 points/4 points
35. Mark - 0 points/4 points
36. Nicole - 0 points/4 points
37. scotty c - 4 points/4 points
38. Tim - 4 points/4 points
39. Bradley Thom - 0 points/3 points
40. Yay!Band! - 0 points/2 points

POST: What do you think of the box office results?