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Welcome to day two of our Twelve Days of Box Office discussion. On a site note, we will maintain our regular schedule on Saturday and Sunday with Tim Briody’s always popular Friday Numbers Analysis and the Weekend Wrap-Up, which Kim Hollis and I will be writing. On Monday, Tim will write the next Twelve Days of Box Office column that evaluates weekend actuals.

With regards to Thursday box office, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol was once again the number one film in North America. Its $6.42 million result represents a decline of 28.0% from Wednesday’s debut in wide release. The previously IMAX-exclusive title may have surprised you with its daily drop. As I noted in yesterday’s column, titles in release will fluctuate a bit during the December holiday time frame, but the expected behavior is to maintain and/or increase. What we are witnessing here is the exception to the rule.

Titles that debut the week prior to Christmas fluctuate more than titles in release. Obviously, yesterday was one day closer to Christmas and this close to the holiday, more consumers should have free time and free time means more box office for all titles. This isn’t the case for new releases. Most of them not named Avatar will experience a second day decline as the opening day rush dissipates. The day two numbers are a more accurate reflection of a title’s true box office demand.

The above also applies to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the feel-bad movie of the holiday season. The Daniel Craig re-make of the Swedish title also fell 34.6% to $3.31 million, which means it also fell from second to fourth place on Thursday. We will discuss why this is important to the overall Twelve Days of Box Office discussion in a moment. For now, what is relevant is that both “new” releases on Wednesday fell in the same general range from Wednesday to Thursday.

We will not see a similar phenomenon with the Christmas Day releases. The reason is that December 26th, even on a Monday, is a massively lucrative box office day. This is how calendar configuration comes into the conversation. Yesterday, I mentioned that we should ignore The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and King Kong’s best weekdays during the Twelve Days of Box Office. The reason is that day was Monday, December 26th.

Consider that the range for Narnia for the week prior to Christmas was $4.6 - $4.9 million. For Tuesday-Thursday, December 27-29, the range was $8.9 - $9.2 million. Its December 26th box office was $11.9 million. To put this number into perspective, its best weekend day total during either holiday frame was $9.7 million. A Monday destroyed Narnia’s best Friday, Saturday or Sunday. The same is true of King Kong. Its best weekend day of box office was $8.8 million. On December 26th, it earned $12.0 million. The uptick the day after Christmas is massive. And that will be the conversation for next Tuesday’s column. The important aspect for now is that neither Mission: Impossible 4 nor The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has the advantage that films opening on December 23rd or 25th do when it comes to holiday box office inflation. As such, we should not read much into their similar Wednesday-Thursday drops.

Of course, I should mention that the unheralded third title released on Wednesday, The Adventures of Tintin, marginally avoided this behavior. After an uninspired $2.30 million on Wednesday, Steven Spielberg’s animated global sensation effectively held serve with $2.43 million on Thursday. Longtime BOP readers already know the words I will use to explain this but hey, some of you may be new this year. For those to whom this applies, first of all, welcome to the site! Secondly, the explanation is that smaller numbers are much easier to match.

As an example, 40% depreciation for a movie that opens to $30 million is good. 40% depreciation for a movie that opens to $100 million is phenomenal. Similarly, a 5.6% gain for a $2.30 million is better than what happened to MI4 and Dragon Tattoo but it’s probably anomalous more than anything else since we’re dealing with such small numbers. We will continue to track it over the next few days to unearth the validity of this supposition.

The aspect of this conversation that I hinted at above that is important is how the already in-release films behaved on Thursday. I noted that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo fell from second to fourth place. The explanation is that while it was perfectly normal for that film to drop from Wednesday to Thursday, the other titles already in release are expected to demonstrate the opposite behavior. To wit, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows increased 10.8% from $4.28 million on Wednesday to $4.75 million. Similarly, Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipmunked increased 13.0% from $3.51 million to $3.97 million.

This behavior was not limited to the top titles in release, either. Out of the top twelve from Thursday, all ten in wide release prior to Wednesday experienced a day over day increase. The numbers ranged from +5.2% for The Sitter, the eleventh place film yesterday, to a whopping 28.1% for Arthur Christmas. And I trust that you are clever enough to figure out why that particular title is ascending in popularity at the moment just as I am sure you realize it won’t last long.

Overall, the average Wednesday-Thursday increase was 13.5%. This is the theme as we move forward. Everything is headed upward from Wedneday’s baseline until January 3rd.