Chronic Murmuring

The Passion Smash

I don't understand why Box Office Mojo already has estimates for Sunday up, seeing as how it's only two in the afternoon. But, anyway, including Sunday's estimates, The Passion has grossed $117,538,000. My prediction of $90 million by the end of the day Sunday looks to have been much too conservative, seeing as how the movie grossed $30 million on Saturday alone. It beat $90 million sometime yesterday evening, and closed Saturday with over $97 million. What a hugely successful movie this is turning out to be. And it's only the fifth say since the movie was released. I'm expecting a lot of repeat viewing, particularly among Christians, so this may turn out to be a gargantuan smash hit of 2004. Probably, Easter weekend will be as big as this weekend has been, in which case it might exceed $250 to $300 million by the time Easter comes around, depending on how these numbers progress into the next few weeks. Not that Gibson set out to make a blockbuster; he probably was hoping, at the very best, to break even or turn a slight profit once the movie went into DVD sales. But the serendipitous factors concerning the controversy of the film, and how the film was talked about using carefully selected church leaders and conservative pundits turned out to have made this thing into something of a quickly growing, tumbling snowball.

The Academy Awards are tonight, and so of course, this would be the first time in my 28 years of life that I'll not have even local, network television, and therefore, won't be able to see it. I'm debating about just going to a bar or something and watching it, but I don't even know if I can find a place like that. Paige is coming in tonight, anyway, and we haven't seen one another for days. So I'd like to get all of my schoolwork out of the way so that tonight, we can hang out instead of me spending the evening busiliy going over tomorrow's lecture. Still, I'm so aggravated that I can't watch it.

But I read that Mel Gibson won't be attending tonight. He was asked by the show's producer, apparently, to present an award, but declined for fear that he would be boo'd. He might not have been boo'd - man, imagine if he actually was boo'd! What a bunch of asses if they did that - but more than likely, he would've been the butt of a lot of jokes. I may have to just drive somewhere to watch Crystal's opening act to see what's said.