Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong topped the box office this weekend with an estimated total of $50.1 million, well below expectations given Jackson's track record and the film's $207 million production cost.  However King Kong has already earned an estimated $80 million overseas giving it a five-day total of $146 million worldwide.   Nevertheless King Kong has fared much worse domestically than any of Jackson's Lord of the Rings films.  Even the first LOTR film had a 5-day total of $75.1 million, well ahead of Kong's $66.3 million. 

Of course Jackson's Frodo Flicks didn't have to compete with any other big budget fantasy films while King Kong had to go head-to-head with Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia, which declined 52.4%, but still earned an estimated $31.1 million over its second weekend.  Although it was hampered somewhat by its three hour and seven minute running time, King Kong managed a solid $14,000 per location, and audiences really liked it with 92% grading it as excellent or very good.  Another positive indicator was the fact that the audience was up nearly 40% from Friday to Saturday indicating solid word of mouth.  Certainly the big ape was slow out of the gate in its mid-week opening (see 'Quiet Opening for the Big Monkey'), but with strong reviews, good word of mouth and kids getting out of school for the holiday break next week, chances are pretty good that Kong will demonstrate good 'legs' over the long run -- and that early verdicts such as the Drudge Reports' 'King Kong Bombs?' are likely to be overturned.  One of Universal's big fears is that Kong will not be able to attract women, but the opening weekend demographic breakdown of 53% male and 47% female has to be seen as encouraging, while the fact that the majority of the audience (55%) was over 25 indicates that school and finals may have been factors in Kong's less-than-stratospheric opening.