Let's do the numbers

After a fairly quiet weekend both for Oscar contenders and general audience pictures, the industry now looks ahead to next weekend's opening of "Walk the Line" and the major awards magnets looming in December, headlined by "Memoirs of a Geisha," "Brokeback Mountain" and "Munich."

This weekend did offer one surprise, however. "Pride & Prejudice," which pulled in $2.9 million from 215 theaters, averaged a potent $13,325 per site. The debut was on par with fellow Jane Austen adaptation, "Sense and Sensibility," which began with $721,341 from 70 theaters back in 1995. "Pride" doesn't have the critical support of "Sense," but it will have a wider rollout; on Nov. 23, distributor Focus Features will expand the release to 1,200-1,500 theaters. The pattern is similar to that of another Working Title production, 2003's "Love Actually." That romantic comedy was intended as a crowd pleaser, but proved too frothy to take hold with the academy.

Universal relaunched Cinderella Man in Los Angeles, New York City and Toronto to give Ron Howard's period boxing drama a better Oscar shot. The accompanying television ad touts the picture as the year's highest grossing drama and even though it made a disappointing $61.6 million, Universal is not stretching the truth with that proclamation.

"Cinderella Man" ranks No. 34 for the year thus far and, unless one counts "Coach Carter," no pure drama is higher. The next one on the list is "Crash" at No. 39 with $53.4 million.

At the same point in 2004, the top grossing drama (outside of "The Passion of the Christ") was "The Notebook" with $81 million, ranking No. 24. Ultimately, best picture nominee "The Aviator" claimed the top-gross title with $102.6 million, followed closely by winner "Million Dollar Baby."

Though "Cinderella Man" might still be in the Oscar hunt, Universal's "Jarhead" looks down for the count. Generating mixed word-of-mouth at best, the frustrated military movie plunged 58% over the weekend — steep by any measure let alone for a prestige picture. Because it opened so well last weekend, though, it has grossed $46.5 million in 10 days.

Universal still has a strong slate ahead with "King Kong" on Dec. 14 and "The Producers" on Dec. 16, but most Oscar eyes are on Steven Spielberg's "Munich" on Dec. 23.

Next weekend, "Walk the Line" will get an aggressive launch from 20th Century Fox in about 2,900 theaters. By comparison, last year's hot music biography, "Ray," opened at 2,006 venues. Thanksgiving sees the release of "Syriana" and "Rent." Sony has the latter scheduled for about 2,500 locations, which is unusually high for a musical as the major recent entries in the genre — "Moulin Rouge," "Chicago," "The Phantom of the Opera" — each started on a limited basis.