December 26th, 2001

"The Lord" Of The Box Office

The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Rings, led the weekend's box office and holiday movie season with an amazing 66.1 million over the course of December 21st to December 25th. The film has made 94 million since Wednesday... this is no doubt a giant hit and should continue to be a giant success and a huge franchise when the next installments pop up in December 2002 and 2003. I've never read Tolkein myself, but I saw the film and enjoyed it a lot, though I felt it was a tiny bit overrated... still, it's well worth seeing and despite his hardcore fans going out to see the movie, it should convert new ones as well.

In second place for the four day weekend, was Ocean's Eleven with 21.3 million, pushing it's total to over 100 million. In third was Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius with 18.5 million. The film is based on a series of shorts that have aired on Nickelodeon to help promote and push the film's release, not to mention to act as a prequel of sorts to next Fall's TV series of the same name on Nick. Marketing is great, isn't it?

Vanilla Sky continued to score nicely in fourth with 16.4 million, while Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is still hanging on with 10.7. There was also How High with 9.7 million and The Majestic with a weak 7.3 million. That is surely a disappointment given the credibility of Jim Carrey and Frank Darabont, not to mention the "buzz" and poor reviews the film is getting.

Rounding it out was Not Another Teen Movie with 7.1 million, Monsters INC. with 5.6 and the new film Joe Somebody with 5.3.

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas, and as you can see, this film season is shaping up with a lot of surprises and interesting performances of films. It'll be even more interesting as small films qualifying for Oscar® consideration go wide and how all these hold up...

-Zach B.