..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

The Rise (Passion) and Fall (Alamo) of Easter There are a lot of old jokes that start out: I've got good news … and I've got bad news. First, the good. In the spirit of Easter, The Passion of The Christ was commercially resurrected to top viewing choice with an estimated $17.9 million weekend and domestic cume to date of $355.7 million. Searchlight's debut of the broadly black comic Johnson Family Vacation had excellent results of $9.2 million for the weekend and a five-day gross of $11.6 million. And overall business for the frame was up either 13% (comparative weekend) or 25% (Easter weekend 2003) from last year. And, now the bad. The Alamo could not weather intense media scrutiny and hobbled to a roughly $9.3 million debut. Three other national bows were undone by holdover titles and barely ranked among the top 10 viewing choices. The weekend should tally up to close to $120 million for a significant bump from 2003 when Anger Management was launched with an impressive $42 million and held sway over such freshmen entries as Holes and Malibu's Most Wanted the following Easter weekend. However, ticket sales took a 7% from hit from last weekend's bow of Hellboy that slipped to second spot this weekend with a gross just shy of $11 million. It was anticipated that The Passion of The Christ would benefit slightly from the Easter holiday and its 69% box office boost was even better than expected. Newmarket is taking a more cautious position, estimating $17.1 million but some industry trackers believe that church and individual sales will be more robust and are predicting as much as $19 million for the three day span. Regardless, the film is now on track to gross close to $400 million domestically and rank among the most successful films ever on the basis of cost to return. Historically the Easter weekend has not been a prime viewing time, so Disney's decision to release The Alamo was a bit nervy. However, the company could not have anticipated the deluge of bad press it would receive from reviewers and the attention accorded its blighted production history and the current and future fortunes of the studio. The result was akin to poisoning the well and the film's $9.3 million opening will certainly generate countless stories positioning the film as one of Disney's and the industry's biggest commercial failures. It's also a bit of a head scratcher that so many of the majors decided to open films Easter weekend. Ironically, the only one of the five with demonstrable potency was the low budget Johnson Family Vacation, a broad comedy headlining Cedric the Entertainer that was positioned as counter programming and generated a theater average roughly double of any of the other freshmen quartet. The critically ravaged sequel The Whole Ten Yards slotted eighth in the lineup with approximately $6.7 million and was followed by the fairy tale spoof Ella Enchanted and the youth comedy The Girl Next Door. The two latter titles each grossed roughly $6 million and unquestionably got lost in the shuffle of new and recent releases. In regional and specialized arenas, there were some encouraging openers including the 75 print debut of Dans une Galaxie pres de chez vous, a spoof of Star Trek that's been a popular TV skein in Quebec and grossed better than $500,000. The latest Hindi title, Masti, had only fair returns of $87,000 from 27 venues as was the case for Twentynine Palms with a $13,000 gross from two screens. However, the four screen launch of Italian Oscar submission I'm Not Scared on four screens generated an impressive $13,000 per screen average. Specialized expansions were also disappointing including the addition of 76 sites (to 90 playdates) for Lars von Trier's Dogville. The Nicole Kidman starrer barked up only a respectable $210,000 weekend. - by Leonard Klady