Bad weather and last minute Christmas shopping have both been blamed for a poor showing this weekend at the movies, with receipts down 46% from the same weekend last year when National Treasure 2 earned $44 million.  Jim Carrey’s new comedy Yes Man collected only an estimated $18.2 million making it the lowest grossing box office topper in the past two months.  However Yes Man did top the Will Smith-starring Seven Pounds ($16 million), breaking a string of eight straight number one openings for films featuring the former Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Universal’s animated The Tale of Despereaux, which is based on a popular children’s book and attracted a correspondingly young audience (35% under 12), opened in the third spot with an estimated $10.5 million.  Business for this mouse-based family film should pick up over the upcoming holiday period as kids get out of school.  Tale’s only animated competition, Disney’s Bolt, finished in seventh place during its fifth week in theaters.  With a cumulative over $95 million, Bolt is a cinch to pass the $100 million mark.

Box Office Weekend (Studio Estimates): Dec. 19 - 21, 2008

Warner Bros.’ comedy Four Christmases surpassed the century mark this week, and in spite of comedy competition from Yes Man, Four Christmases declined just 40%.  The vampire saga Twilight did even better, dropping just 34% and running its cumulative to $158.6 million.  It appears likely that Twilight will end up earning more than the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, which finished in 10th place, earning an estimated $2.1 million and bringing its six-week total to $161.3 million.

Last week’s winner, the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, took a major tumble dropping nearly 67% and falling to fourth place.  Still, it's hard to know how much of the decline is the result of the effects of the bad winter weather that blanketed the country with snow and cold from Seattle to Boston.

In spite of the fact that five new films are debuting on Christmas Day including The Spirit, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Bedtime Stories, Valkyrie and Marley & Me, Yes Man isn’t likely to experience a precipitous 60+% decline next weekend given Jim Carrey’s strong following and the fact that some members of the potential audience for Yes Man were likely deterred by the bad weather.  Still, competition will be brutal at the multiplexes during the post-Christmas weekend. 

Christmas, which is traditionally a strong movie-going day, falls on Thursday this year, a circumstance that led to the surfeit of new titles debuting on the 25th as the studios pounced on the opportunity to bump up their first weekend grosses with a Christmas Day debut. While the total box office should be up substantially next weekend, the horde of newcomers and weather-hampered holdovers makes predicting the post-Xmas winners and losers a difficult task indeed.