OMG!! Dear John's opening weekend may be bigger than Avatar's eighth weekend!

We'll see tomorrow whether Dear John actually succeeds in dethroning Avatar from the top of the weekend box office, but the Nicolas Sparks adaptation would need a sub-2.0 weekend multiplier coupled with a over 4x multiplier for Avatar to fall short.  For now, Dear John has grossed a stunning opening day gross of $13.8 million, while Avatar again dropped just 16% for a $6.2 million Friday gross.  For the record, even if Avatar falls, let's not forget that we're dealing with a film's opening weekend versus another film's seventh weekend of business. I'm sure we'll see no end to the story that 'Avatar got beaten by a chick flick' which completely ignores how female-friendly Avatar really was.  Among other fem-friendly elements, it had a genuinely compelling romantic subplot and (most importantly) a dynamic female action lead that is every bit as bad-ass and as important to the story as the male lead. Female interest was a big reason why Avatar has done so well, and male interest both in the apolitical 'traveling soldier' storyline and the appeal of Amanda Seyfried (both professional and prurient) is a big part of why Dear John is opening so well. Just like the 'Cameron vs. Bigelow' nonsense, not everything can be simplified into 'boys vs. girls'.

The bigger thing is that, with $32-35 million projected for the weekend, Dear John will score the biggest opening weekend ever for a pure romantic drama (Pearl Harbor was a action/war adventure as well as a romance).  I was expecting Dear John to open well (it certainly was better marketed than From Paris With Love), perhaps even to the $25 million+ that it needed to dethrone Cameron's opus, but even I was shocked by the size of the number.  Previous Nicolas Sparks adaptations (The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe, Message In a Bottle, A Walk to Remember) have opened between $12 million and $16 million over their entire weekends.  Without question, Nicolas Sparks has become the first brand-name author since Michael Crichton's post-Jurassic Park heyday and Stephen King's post-Misery boom in the mid-90s.  I'll be fascinated to see the tracking tomorrow, as we'll see how many females went to ogle Channing Tatum, how many males went with their significant others to covertly ogle Amanda Seyfried, and how many were sold on the Nicolas Sparks brand.  But for now, congratulations Dear John, you're the new Lost in Space.  Next stop: Trivial Pursuit immortality (and a bonus pie piece who can name the other connection between Lost in Space and Dear John).

Scott Mendelson