A Very "Fockers" Christmas

Everyone wanted to meet those Fockers over the Christmas weekend.

Serving up a generous dose of ha ha ha over the ho-ho-ho holiday, Meet the Fockers' stocking was stuffed with $46.1 million from Friday to Sunday, including a record-setting $19.5 million on Christmas Day.

Since debuting Wednesday, Universal's sequel to the 2000 smash hit Meet the Parents has grossed $70.5 million, according to studio figures Monday.

The just-in-time-for-the-Yuletide delivery was enough to demote last weekend's top movie, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, to second. The $140 million Jim Carrey-starring kiddie tale dropped a sharp 58 percent with $12.6 million in holiday receipts for a two-week tally of $59.3 million.

Meanwhile, another jolly fellow bounced into the box-office charts over the weekend: Fat Albert, which earned a fulsome $10 million over the two days since its Christmas Day opening to debut in third.

The PG-13 Miramax horror mystery Darkness, starring Anna Paquin, opened Saturday in just 1,700 theaters--compared to 3,518 for Meet the Fockers and 2,674 for Fat Albert--and debuted in seventh place with $6.2 million over its two days in release.

With Christmas coming on a Saturday, studios were reluctant to open films on Friday (Christmas Eve is a traditionally slow day at the megaplex), and therefore expectations for the weekend were low. But Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations, said that Meet the Fockers trumped the conventional wisdom and did "terrific" business.

"You couldn't beat that title," he said Sunday, noting that Universal picked the right release date, conducted an excellent marketing campaign and benefited from the successful DVD sales of Meet the Parents, in which Ben Stiller's Gaylord "Greg" Focker first encountered fiancée Teri Polo's uptight dad and mom, played Robert De Niro and Blythe Danner.

This time around, we get introduced to the zany Focker clan, played by Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman. With De Niro, Hoffman and Streisand appealing to adults and Stiller pulling in the younger demo, the PG-13 Fockers was a hit across the board with a per-site average of $13,110. (Its three-day holiday haul came up just short of the Christmas weekend record set in 2001 by The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which opened with $47.2 million.)

Nikki Rocco, Universal's president of distribution, said the Fockers' dominance "is very rewarding" and the film appears to be "a blockbuster endeavor."

A week after suffering through the crash landing of Flight of the Phoenix, Fox distribution chief Bruce Snyder said he was "feeling happy" with the solid performance of Fat Albert, a live-action adaptation of Bill Cosby's classic TV 'toon with Kenan Thompson as the title character. Although exact demographics for the PG-rated release weren't yet available, Snyder noted that good business for the late-evening shows suggests that teenage audiences were also ticket buyers, not just families with younger kids.

In limited release in 622 theaters, Warners' PG-13 The Phantom of the Opera earned $4 million from a $6,433 per-screen average. Since tuning in Wednesday, the long-awaited movie version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's stage musical has swept up $6.3 million.

At just seven theaters, MGM/UA's Hotel Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle in a fact-based tale of the genocide in Africa, averaged $20,340 for a total of $142,386.

Debuting in six sites on Friday, the Kevin Bacon pedophile tale The Woodsman grossed $53,985 on an average of $8,997 for distributor Newmarket.

The highest screen average belonged to Clint Eastwood's Oscar-buzzing boxing drama Million Dollar Baby. In just eight theaters, the film averaged $21,066 for a $189,597 weekend, bringing its total to $527,138.

Another potential Oscar contender moved into the top 10 list. Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the eccentric mogul Howard Hughes, flew from just 40 sites to 1,796 on Christmas Day, leaping from 14th slot all the way up to fourth with earnings of $8.6 million, bringing its two-week gross to $10 million.

The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou also launched wide, moving from just two sites to 1,105 in its third week. That helped the quirky Bill Murray fishing trip sail from 31st place to ninth, earning it $4.5 million from a $4,115 average.

That average was more than double that for Adam Sandler's Spanglish, which only earned $4.6 million at 2,411 theaters in its second week, falling from third to eighth place, a 43 percent drop.

Overall the top 12 movies grossed $118.6 million, 28 percent less than this time last year, when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ruled. But thanks to the Fockers, the box office was up 20 percent from last week.

As the end of the year approaches--with New Year's Eve on a Friday likely to put a dent on takings--Dergarabedian says 2004's overall box office will probably be higher than 2003, but only because ticket prices are up. Attendance for the year will almost certainly be down.

Here's a rundown of the top 10 based on final studio figures compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

1. Meet the Fockers, $46.1 million
2. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, $12.5 million
3. Fat Albert, $10 million
4. The Aviator, $8.6 million
5. Ocean's Twelve, $8.4 million
6. The Polar Express, $6.5 million
7. Darkness, $6.2 million
8. Spanglish, $4.64 million
9. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, $4.55 million
10. The Phantom of the Opera, $4 million

(Originally published Dec. 26, 2004 at 6:35 p.m. PT.)