Little Fockers was number one at the box office over the first day of the five-day Christmas holiday. But it was a much tighter race than expected, as True Grit held its own and Tron: Legacy remained steady. Little Fockers, the much-unanticipated finale to Fockers trilogy ('This Christmas... the journey ends.'), debuted with $7.2 million. By any normal standards, this would be a solid Wednesday debut for a comedy. But Meet the Fockers (a film that wasn't insanely anticipated either six long years ago) opened its Christmas long-weekend with $12.2 million. That film, which had much better reviews, ended up with $70 million by the end of the long weekend, or a 5.7x weekend multiplier. Should Little Fockers follow suit, it will end the long-weekend with $41 million, or about $5 million less that Meet the Fockers made in the Fri-Sun portion of its opening weekend.The other major opener was True Grit, which showed just that with a solid $5.5 million opening day. The Coen Brothers western should play steadily all weekend, as it's a fine and compelling mass-audience picture. Paramount is hoping for a solid 5.5x multiplier, which would put the film just over $30 million for the weekend. Tron: Legacy pulled in another $5.6 million, which means that it will be a constant race for second place (or first place if Little Fockers crumbles) over the whole weekend. Tron: Legacy is still performing like an inflation-adjusted variation on King Kong, minus the extra $15 million that King Kong got by opening on a Wednesday. King Kong has a 6.5x weekend multiplier over the Wed-Sun portion that made up its second weekend. A similar 6x multiplier would give Tron: Legacy $33 million between yesterday and Sunday and a ten-day total of about $89 million.
It will be interesting to see how well both of the films play to families, as Tron: Legacy is a PG-rated film that looks (in the ads) like a hard-edged PG-13, while True Grit is a PG-13 western that looks R but, save for one moment of brutal and graphic violence and some emotionally-disturbing end-of-film violence, almost could have snuck by with an 'Attack of the Clones PG'.
Scott Mendelson
