Robert Zemeckis’ motion capture adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which features Jim Carrey voicing a number of different roles, easily captured the weekend box office with an estimated take of $31 million, but the 3-D holiday extravaganza debuted well below expectations with a less than stellar per theater average of just $8,417.  Holdover films did well, in part because the Saturday night Halloween eviscerated last weekend, but the total of the top ten films was down 14% from the same frame last year when Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa debuted with $63.1 million.

Compared with Madagascar 2, A Christmas Carol’s opening was weak, but holiday films that open this time of year tend to have good “legs.,” and Carol will have over 200 IMAX screens all to itself until Avatar opens on December 18th.  Zemeckis’ previous holiday-themed motion capture film The Polar Express, which “starred” Tom Hanks and opened on November 10th, 2004 did only 14.3% of its business during its debut weekend.  If A Christmas Carol follows the same pattern, it could end up with $200 million domestically.  Disney is likely hoping for more for the film, which cost at least $185 million to produce.

This is the time of year that a diverse group of films, some of which have Academy Award aspirations, open almost every weekend.  George Clooney’s comedy about a New Age Army Unit, The Men Who Stare At Goats, beat the prognosticator’s projections thanks to a solid $13.3 million first weekend with an audience split evenly between men and women.  Also enjoying a decent debut at #4 ($12.5 million) was Universal’s alien abduction drama, The Fourth Kind, which managed to draw a predominantly male (55%) and young (61% under 25) audience in spite of poor reviews.  Less successful was Warners’ creepy thriller The Box, which opened in sixth place with an estimated $7.8 million and received a rare “F” CinemaScore from audiences. 

The biggest story this weekend was the spectacular limited release debut of the searing ghetto drama Precious, which averaged $100,000 per theater from 18 locations.  The Sundance winner, which is based on the novel Push, looks like an art house hit, and should do well during the awards season. 

Among the holdovers the top film was the Michael Jackson documentary This Is It, which slipped less than 40% from its opening weekend, earning an estimated $14 million, finishing in second place, and running its domestic total to nearly $58 million.  But the Jackson concert film has done nearly 70% of its business overseas, where Jackson remains an even bigger star than he is in the U.S.

Paramount’s phenomenal micro-budgeted hit Paranormal Activity finally showed some signs of weakness, dropping 47.5% and falling to the fifth spot.  Paranormal will top the $100 million mark during the next week along with Universal’s Couples Retreat, which has had the romantic comedy field all to itself and remained in the top ten for its fifth week at #7. 

The revenge drama Law Abiding Citizen (down just 16.6%), the pricy children’s book adaptation Where the Wild Things Are (off 28.8%) and the CGI animated Astro Boy (off 25.2%) finished out the top ten.