There Will Be Blood scored the best opening in limited release this year with an amazing $190,000 in 2 theaters for an average of $95,370, and that's for a Wednesday release. The Bucket List opened with an average of $20,990 in 16 theaters. Two imports earned nearly identical averages with Persepolis topping The Orphanage $12,689 to $12,280. While There Will Be Blood earned the best per theater average of the year, I was more impressed with Juno and Atonement, both of which topped $10,000 despite being in theaters for weeks now and undergoing massive expansions during that time. Juno earned over $10 million in less than 1000 theaters for an average of $10,436 while Atonement earned an average of $10,074 in just over 300 theaters thanks to a holiday boost.

Only two other limited releases debuted over the weekend with Honeydripper earning an average of $2,465 and Imaginary Witness earning $1,090.

Again, due to the holidays, many limited releases have not release weekend numbers. There will be an extensive list next week detailing all of the milestones reached over the Christmas / New Years break.

- C.S.Strowbridge

Date posted: 2008-01-03