Going bonkers for ‘The Fockers’

With a relatively weak lineup of movies overall, Christmas weekend 2004 turned into a Focker family affair as “Meet the Fockers” grossed $44.7 million Friday through Sunday and $68.5 million since its opening on Wednesday, according to studio estimates released Sunday.

The movie delivered the highest-ever Christmas Day gross of $19.1 million, surpassing the high for the day of $14 million set by last year’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.” “Fockers,” director Jay Roach’s sequel to his October 2001 movie “Meet the Parents,” bested the original’s opening by well over 50%. Demographically, the film skewed somewhat young and slightly female (52%), Universal reported, and 40% of the audience was over 25.

Despite the solid showing of “Meet the Fockers,” it couldn’t make up for the weakness in the rest of the lineup. If the estimated total of $140 million for all movies holds up, box office tracking firm Nielsen EDI Inc. reported, it will be down 25% from the comparable weekend last year, which had a total of $186.2 million. That weekend offered “The Return of the King” in the top spot ($50.6 million Friday through Sunday) as well as “Cold Mountain,” “Cheaper by the Dozen” and “Something’s Gotta Give,” and the top seven films each grossed $11 million or more. This year, only the top three films grossed $12 million or more.

Holiday and year-to-date comparisons are no more encouraging. The tally for the industry holiday period that runs from the Friday before Thanksgiving through the weekend encompassing or immediately after New Year’s Day is currently $1.04 billion -- off 10% from the 2003 period and 11% from the holiday stretch in the record overall year 2002.

The current year as a whole looks marginally better, although with $8.9 billion and counting, year-to-date box office is running only 1% ahead of last year. When you consider that ticket prices have gone up, it means attendance is actually down, but by how much is difficult to gauge. The 2004 grosses are running 1% behind the records set in 2002, but attendance was at a modern high that year, which means the industry has fallen even further in the number of tickets sold.

This year, two films opened on Christmas Day, “Fat Albert” and “Darkness.” “Fat Albert,” based on the character created by Bill Cosby, was the No. 2 movie for the weekend, with 20th Century Fox estimating the two-day take at $12.7 million.

The film’s audience, predictably, consisted of families and kids, Fox president of distribution Bruce Snyder reported, with 69% families (47% under 12 and 22% parents), but the film also attracted teenagers, with 31% of its audience made up of what Snyder described as “non-parents 12 and older.”

Miramax’s Dimension Films counterprogrammed, with its low-budget horror film acquisition “Darkness” taking in $6.4 million to land in sixth place.

Martin Scorsese’s awards contender “The Aviator,” with Leonardo DiCaprio as a young Howard Hughes, jumped from 40 to 1,796 theaters on Saturday, for an estimated weekend total of $9.4 million, which includes Friday numbers, to move into fourth place.

The movie, which Miramax said was attracting audiences about evenly divided between males and females and skewing slightly older, had taken in about $10.8 million to date.

Joel Schumacher’s film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of the Opera” came in at No. 10 for the weekend with an estimated $4.2 million, Warner Bros. reported. In a relatively modest 622 locations, the movie posted the second highest per-theater average ($6,752) among the top dozen pictures after “Fockers” ($12,699), with the latter in 3,518 venues. “Phantom” has taken in an estimated $6.5 million since it opened Wednesday.

Disney expanded director Wes Anderson’s “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” from two locations Saturday to 1,105, for a ninth place showing of $4.9 million and $5.3 million to date.

Among awards contenders in limited release, MGM’s United Artists release “Hotel Rwanda” took in about $111,000 over the weekend, or $15,892 per theater in seven venues in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago.

The film, which stars Don Cheadle as a Rwandan hotel manager who saved some 1,200 lives when the country’s dominant Hutu tribe slaughtered more than 800,000 Tutsis, has taken in $154,000 since it opened Wednesday, and MGM plans to expand to 150 theaters on Jan. 28, after Academy Awards nominations are announced.

“The Woodsman,” in which Kevin Bacon plays a pedophile who has served a prison term and is attempting to return to civilian life, opened Friday and took in about $61,198 in six theaters for a per-venue average of $10,200, Newmarket Films reported.

In its second weekend, Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” grossed an estimated $212,103 or $26,513 per theater, Warner Bros. reported.

Currently in eight locations, the film will add theaters gradually, leading up to a wide release Jan. 28 after the Oscar nominations.

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Box Office

Preliminary results (in millions) based on studio projections.

*--* Movie 3-day gross Total Meet the Fockers $44.7 $68.5 Fat Albert 12.7 12.7 Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events 12.5 59.3 The Aviator 9.4 10.8 Ocean’s Twelve 8.6 86.9 Darkness 6.4 6.4 The Polar Express 6.3 140 Spanglish 5 18.5 The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou 4.9 5.3 The Phantom of the Opera 4.2 6.5

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Source: Nielsen EDI Inc.