Some quick thoughts

As I try to clear my schedule over the next week or so to see Borat, a couple thoughts:

As you probably know, Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan won the weekend box office with $26.5 million. Many in the industry considered it a surprise because awareness levels of the movie were fairly low, and Fox even admitted that it was tracking behind Santa Clause III (further evidence that we are a nation of retards).

But the most amazing thing about Borat’s box office is that it came on 837 theaters–which makes it only the second movie since 1982 to win a weekend with fewer than 1,000 theaters. That translates to a $31,607 per-theater average. According to boxofficemojo.com, Borat had the third-best ever per-theater average for a wide release. Historically, it trails only Pirates of the Caribbean II and Spiderman in best per-theater average for a wide release. And those two movies ended up the sixth- and seventh-most successful movies, respectively, of all-time. It looks like Borat will not “be execute.”