Aðsóknin í USA - The Day The Earth Stood Still á topnnum en fær Hræðilega dóma

Twentieth Century Fox's The Day The Earth Stood Still opened to an excellent $11.5M Friday for what should be a solid $32M weekend. However, rival studios tell me that the pic's Cinemascore was the hard-to-achieve "C-" (when it's rare to see anything below a "B"), with moviegoers over age 25 giving it a "D". No wonder the PG-13 pic has only 21% positive reviews by top critics on Rotten Tomatoes, despite starring Keanu Reeves, and Oscar winners Jennifer Connelly and Kathy Bates. Since the sci-fi film has this weekend all to itself (after Will Smith's Seven Pounds vacated the date), it had a veritable guarantee of getting past $30M if not a total stinker. For weeks now, this reimagining (no one ever calls it a remake anymore) of the 1951 black-and-white sci-fi classic had been tracking well. Encouraging, since Fox was running only 35% of its TV ad money at the time. There was "very strong" wanna-see with older males followed by younger males, even registering a solid "first choice". On the other hand, there was virtually no female appeal. But the studio then spent 65% of its TV ad money over the last 8 days, and interest among gals picked up going into Friday's release. The studio had other reasons to be bullish: it had 120 Imax runs, and 12:01 AM Friday plays in about 500 locations of its overall 3,560 theaters, and a day-and-date release into 90 overseas markets this weekend. So the pic should break the studio's losing streak that began at the start of the summer. But the concensus in Hollywood is that The Day The Earth Stood Still is unlikely to get to a $100M box office lifetime domestically on a film that Fox claims had an $80M pricetag without P&A. (But I bet that publicity stunt stunt sending the film, via equipment at Cape Canaveral, on a 4-year trip to Alpha Centauri isn't cheap.)

But the real news of the weekend is the Warner Bros' opening of Clint Eastwood's Oscar-buzzed Gran Torino Friday night in 6 theaters (3 in NY, 3 in LA). The drama grossed $74,573 with a big per screen average of $12,427 -- that's TWICE as much as his Best Picture-winning Million Dollar Baby made on December 17, 2004 in the same theaters ($37,208 total, per screen average $6,201.) "Clint is the man!" a top Warner Bros exec gushed to me this morning.

Two other films were released this weekend. Overture Films' Latino-flavored Nothing Like The Holidays, with its unlikely pairing of Debra Messing and John Leguizamo, opened in 1,671 venues which don't necessarily need another dysfunctional family laugher when Four Christmases is still in cineplexes. Formerly titled Humboldt Park, the PG-13 pic debuted with $1.1M for a projected $4M weekend. And Key Creatives's children fantasy toon Delgo released by Freestyle into 2,160 dates opened to an abysmal $119K Friday and would be lucky to hit $333M for the weekend.

Focus Features' Oscar-buzzed Milk widened into 328 runs this weekend.