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{"id":1873,"date":"2006-11-30T22:18:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-30T22:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2006\/11\/the-nativity-story-will-it-sell-tickets\/"},"modified":"2006-11-30T22:18:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-30T22:18:00","slug":"the-nativity-story-will-it-sell-tickets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2006\/11\/the-nativity-story-will-it-sell-tickets.html","title":{"rendered":"The Nativity Story — will it sell tickets?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a>
Anyone wanna hazard any guesses about The Nativity Story<\/a><\/i>\u2018s box-office chances this weekend? I\u2019m bad at making predictions of this sort \u2014 and even the \u201cexperts\u201d who usually do so seem to be refraining from their prognostications this week \u2014 but I like number-crunching, so I just posted some thoughts on this here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a nutshell:<\/p>\n

I fully expect the PG-rated The Nativity Story<\/i>, which is opening on 3,183 screens, to do better than the R-rated thriller Turistas<\/a><\/i>, which is opening on 1,570, or the R-rated comedy Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj<\/a><\/i>, which is opening on 1,979 and, incidentally, does not seem to have been screened for critics<\/a> in advance.<\/p>\n

As for the other competitors, if the last nine years are any indication, Happy Feet<\/a><\/i> and Casino Royale<\/a><\/i>, the current reigning champs, will drop to somewhere between $14 million and $18 million in this, the first weekend after the American Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

The question is, will The Nativity Story<\/i> do any better?<\/p>\n

Only three new releases in the past quarter-century have grossed more than $13 million in the week after Thanksgiving. Two \u2014 Behind Enemy Lines<\/a><\/i> (2001; $18.7 million) and The Last Samurai<\/a><\/i> (2003; $24.3 million) \u2014 were post-9\/11 movies about cynical American soldiers who discover a new purpose in life after spending time in a foreign culture. The third was Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country<\/a><\/i> (1991; $18.2 million; my comments<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Obviously, The Nativity Story<\/i> doesn\u2019t exactly fit those<\/i> molds. So if it were just a regular movie, I would expect it to do somewhere in the mid-teens. But \u2026 it\u2019s got a seasonal \u201crelevance\u201d that no other film released in this timeframe has had in years \u2026 and of course it has a particular appeal to the audience that made The Passion of the Christ<\/a><\/i> (2004) such a record-breaking hit \u2026 so who knows?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"