The Big Fish did not

As the final box-office figures were tallied on Monday, the small estimated lead Tim Burton's Big Fish had over Peter Jackson's The Return Of The King vanished. ROTK claimed the box-office crown for the fourth week in a row, grossing $14.2 million, and proving that its distributors' Sunday estimate was correct. Its American gross now is $312 million.

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Studios release the estimated weekend box-office grosses Sunday noon. While they do it, they have the firm numbers for Friday and Saturday, based on which they speculate the Sunday gross. In most cases, there is a slight fluctuation, say about two per cent, when the actual three-day figures arrive Monday noon.

Columbia Pictures officials said on Monday that Big Fish had grossed $13.8 million, about $700,000 less than what they had expected. The studio had expected it to have a strong Sunday but its hopes were clearly misplaced.    

But there was still plenty to rejoice for Columbia Pictures since it has been now established that Big Fish is headed for a medium range hit status with potential for a $85 million-$90 million gross in America. Made for $70 million, it is not an easy sell particularly since it has no big box-office stars. It is also a rather meditative kind of fantasy that offers no instant gratification.

Columbia deliberately opened it on a handful of screens in the hope that word of mouth publicity will work in its favour and kept adding more in the next three weeks. It went wide last Friday playing in more than 2400 theatres while ROTK is in more than 3000 movie houses.

In a related development, producer New Line has announced outside North America ROTK gross reached $455 million. Adding the American gross to it, the movie's four week gross stands at $782 million There are excellent chances of it reaching the $1 billion mark becoming the only other film apart from Titanic (worldwide: $1.8 billion) to do so.

Also doing far more impressive business abroad is the Tom Cruise war saga, The Last Samurai, which is struggling to reach the $100 million mark in America, having grossed $96 million. Abroad, where the war epic is yet to open in many key territories, the film has grossed $71 million. The movie, which is set mostly in Japan, has become a crowd pleaser in that country, earning $74 million there in six weeks, according to producer Warner.

With strong openings in Europe and the openings scheduled in many markets in the next two weeks, the film stands a good chance of going beyond the $200 million, doubling the American gross. And once again Tom Cruise proves her muscular popularity abroad.   

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