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

This is the Way the Year Ends Not with a Wimper, But a Pop! It was still all Fock and all action as Meet the Fockers continued to hold sway in theaters with an estimated $43.2 million during the New Year's holiday period. The close out of 2004 saw a modest improvement from the prior year to bring the annual domestic tally through December 30 to approximately $9.33 billion. With the addition of Friday's box office, 2004 will see a slim improvement of 1.7% while admissions are off by 6% from 2003. There were no last minute national debuts but a handful of last minute qualifiers displayed heft, especially In Good Company with a $50,000 plus screen average. Meet the Fockers continued to dominate holiday movie going with its closest rival trailing by nearly $30 million. It had close to a carbon copy gross from Christmas and has a cume of $163.6 million in 12 days of release. Most films in the marketplace experienced at least modest box office improvement from Christmas with some of the higher profile award contenders reaping the biggest rewards including Sideways, Finding Neverland and Ray. There was also an unexpected rally for National Treasure and a more predictable boost for several family films. Overall business should ring in with close to $155 million for a 12% increase from last weekend and a much appreciated 8% spike from the close of 2003. The Aviator ranked third overall with a weekend just shy of $12 million and a cume of $32.1 million since its Christmas day debut. The chronicle of Howard Hughes early exploits maintained a good but not dynamic $6,600 theater average. A similar scenario could also be applied to The Phantom of the Opera with a $7,700 average in 65% fewer locations. The most significant expansion during New Year's was the Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea that expanded from 9 to 383 locations and grossed about $1.3 million. It's $3,300 average will make further expansions more problematic. As noted the light comic look at contemporary corporate culture In Good Company was buoyed by strong reviews, grossing better than $150,000 from three venues. Other limited bows included The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino as Shylock with its pound of flesh translating to $71,300 from four stalls; A five-screen break of The Assassination of Richard Nixon generating $28,400 and a not terribly lilting $24,200 from seven blue bayous for A Love Song for Bobby Long. Million Dollar Baby and Hotel Rwanda both received solid upturns in limited exposure as they maintained strategic award campaigns. Both movies will up the ante to 100 theaters next weekend. The close out of the year tightened a few positions in the market share race though the running order remained intact. Fox is the only studio that could ascend a notch among those not employing a calendar year cut off. Regardless, the top three will be Sony, Warner Bros. and Buena Vista. Final figures and statistics will be available Tuesday. - by Leonard Klady