Which should really surprise no one, given how awful the post-Thanksgiving weekend historically usually is.

If the Yahoo reviews are any indication. This will be a pretty bad weekend for the openers.

With storms on Friday, and a bump expected for Sunday, I think NS very well could increase each day this weekend (Fri, Sat increase, Sunday increase). It's longterm that's important, but we won't get as good a grasp on NS until the Sunday #'s are available on Monday, and just what extent tickets were being bought that day.

The Nativity Story - 95
Turistas - 30
Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj - 25

Still look like $4m for Nativity (400-450 reviews) and $1m each for the other two (120-150 reviews), but they could be way off since that'll be too good for myself.

$4.15m for Nativity, $14.4m for the weekend.
$1.05m for Van Wilder, $2.8m for Van Wilder
$2.15m for Turistas, $5.6m for Turistas

The Nativity Story - 99
Turistas - 32
Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj - 26

These updates sure are a lot easier to do. I believe xiayun has nailed it. The Nativity Story probably has 400 reviews for a $4M Friday (wouldn't be surprised to see a shade less). The other two are probably looking at $1M days. A crappy weekend, as it historically is. I also don't think Nativty's IM will much better than 3.2-3.3, so I'd guess about a $13M weekend at this point.

It's multiplier will be higher than that. Its Sunday could be bigger than its Friday.

Possibly, but there's reallly no consistent precedent for that. Passion's opening Sunday almost was the biggest, but I'm starting to think this may not follow a similar pattern despite similar subject matter.

Passion's Sunday was its 5th day in theaters...a little different. Judging by ticket sales alone, by that time 15.5 million people had already seen the movie.

I honestly think Nativity could have a bigger Sunday than its Saturday. It'll be close at least.

Though we were a little high on Nativity, it was another useful weekend for Yahoo. We were able to predict that it wouldn't break out and that the other two were bombs. Assuming Nativity had 350 reviews, its ratio would have been 146 under the traditional system. Starting this week, I will be posting the ratios under the new system following the release of actuals. NS will be somewhere around 40.

Here are the first set of ratios under the new system:

The Nativity Story - 40.11
Turistas - 24.52
Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj - 29.61

As previously mentioned, I will start archiving these. My hope is that we can officially switch to the new system in February, when we have a couple months of data under our belts.

Yahoo works today?

As of 2pm CET, 8am EST, 5am PST

Apocalypto 60, B
Blood Diamond 17, B
The Holiday 19, C+
Unaccompanied Minors 16, D

Apocalypto - 10, B
Blood Diamond - 6, B
The Holiday - 3, C+
Unaccompanied Minors - 1, D

It looks like they decided to have it working today. We're going to only track written reviews from now on (see my post above).

Apocalypto - 10, +0, B
Blood Diamond - 7, +1, B
The Holiday - 3, +0, C+
Unaccompanied Minors - 1, +0, D

Couldn't you track both, kind of like you've already been doing.

That's up to everyone else. My opinion is that it makes it a lot more confusing, because you have two sets of numbers (and their respective updates) to keep track of. And since the final totals haven't been registering more times than not, I think most are in favor of abandoning the overall reviews altogether. Until we have enough data to solely use the written reviews (probably 2 months or so), we can estimate the overall reviews by using past trends. Like xiayun said last week, most films are usually 1:4 or 1:5, with kid's films generally 1:6.

Apocalypto - 11, +1, B
Blood Diamond - 9, +2, B
The Holiday - 6, +3, B-
Unaccompanied Minors - 1, +0, D

Didnt blood diamond and holiday have sneaks last weekend?

Yeppers.

Apocalypto - 12, +1, B
Blood Diamond - 12, +3, B
The Holiday - 7, +1, B-
Unaccompanied Minors - 1, +0, D+

I see apocalypto with 94 ratings and a B+
Blood Diamond with 44 ratings and a B
The holiday with 36 ratings and a B-
Unaccompanied Minors with 22 ratings and a horrible D+

Those are the overall ratings. Yahoo doesn't appear to be clogged...for now.

I think tracking both (when the overall one is working) for now will be good since at this point, we still have more knowledge with the overall ratios than the written ones.

Xiayun, what ratios would you expect this week? I have 100 for Apocalypto, 120 for Blood Diamond, and 80 for both the Holiday & Minors. Apocalypto is the hardest to gauge, because we don't know how much Mel-bashing (or praise) we may get. It's also looking like UM's ratio will probably be in the triple digits at this rate.