Updated Predictions for Christmas Week Openers: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, MI4, The Adventures of Tintin, We Bought a Zoo, War Horse, The Darkest Hour

Movie	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Monday	3-day OW	4-day OW
Mission: Impossible 4	$8m	$7m (-13%)	$10m (+43%)	$6m (-40%)	$11m (+83%)	$16m (+45%)	$27m	$43m
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	$6.5m	$5m (-23%)	$6m (+20%)	$4m (-33%)	$6.5m (+63%)	$8.5m (+31%)	$16.5m	$25m
The Adventures of Tintin	$3m	$3.3m (+10%)	$4.6m (+39%)	$2.8m (-39%)	$4.2m (+50%)	$7m (+67%)	$11.6m	$18.6m
We Bought a Zoo	N/A	N/A	$4m	$2m (-50%)	$3.5m (+75%)	$6m (+71%)	$9.5m	$15.5m
War Horse	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	$4.5m	$5.5m (+22%)	$4.5m	$10m
The Darkest Hour	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	$2m	$1.5m (-25%)	$2m	$3.5m

Note: for Sunday openers, 3-day OW becomes 1-day, and 4-day OW becomes 2-day.

Reasons of some of the changes: I lowered the opening day projection for M:I4 to $8m after realizing I way overestimated the mid-week dailies from IMAX locations (not the film's fault, but my own stupidity). Still believe it will beat the opening Wednesdays of both Little Fockers and Rocky Balboa. For The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, after looking at the dailies of R-rated films from 2005 during this week (e.g. Syriana and Munich), I no longer see the same OD-to-OW multiplier as previously used, especially given the popularity of the novel. The buzz for The Adventures of Tintin and We Bought a Zoo appears to be even lower, so I downgraded them accordingly. One other factor that could affect Christmas Day is the NBA. NBA always has games on Christmas Day, but the major difference this time is due to the lockout, the season opens on the day and will have 5 games instead of 2. This could dampen the box office of male-oriented films a little.

Movie	Predicted 3-Day Gross (m)	Predicted 4-Day Gross (m)
1. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol	27.0	43.0
2. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows	22.0	35.0
3. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo	16.5	25.0
4. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked	15.0	24.0
5. The Adventures of Tintin	11.6	18.6
6. We Bought a Zoo	9.5	15.5
7. War Horse	4.5	10.0
8. New Year's Eve	5.0	8.0
9. Hugo	2.8	4.5
10. Arthur Christmas	2.7	4.0
-. The Darkest Hour	2.0	3.5
Top 10 Total	116.6 (+10.0%)	187.6

For people who think my predictions for the openers appear too low, the top 10 will gross $116.6m combined, which would in fact be a 10% increase over last frame. Back in 2005, the last time Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday (the worst day of the week for it to fall on in term of box office), the top 12 dropped 17.8% from the previous weekend and barely crossed $100m combined, so it is not unreasonable at all for this weekend to be depressed again, even with all the openers.

Merry Christmas to all!