The big bounce

"Brokeback Mountain" and "Walk the Line" posted some of the greatest post-Golden Globes gains on record last week as their respective distributors, Focus Features and 20th Century Fox, ratcheted up ad campaigns and bolstered the films' presence in theaters.

Historically, the effect of a Golden Globe win is negligible on a movie's box office, especially for best drama winners, where business often drops the following weekend.

"Brokeback Mountain" is the first film in five years to post a gain after a Globes drama victory. The Ang Lee picture increased its theater count by 75% to 1,196, and saw business rise 28% to $7.4 million.

With $41.7 million in the till after 45 days of mostly limited release, "Brokeback Mountain" is on track to top $100 million — provided it receives the all-but-certain best picture Oscar nomination next week, leading to further strategic expansions.

The jump for "Walk the Line" was less surprising, but still impressive. The past five Globe winners for best comedy or musical, which is positioned as the less prestigious award, have seen a box office surge the following week.

The Johnny Cash biopic upped its theater count by 30% to 1,125 with a box office jump of 73% to $3.1 million. The picture is by far the most popular major Oscar contender, crossing the $100-million mark on its 65th day of release.

The irony here is that, overall, Hollywood would be best served to ignore the Globes and other awards shows and just stick with Oscar — the value of an undiluted Academy Award would go up, and the resulting business spike would be greater.

Still, the academy could learn from the Globes in its willingness to embrace more than just somber or pretentious dramas. If the Oscars would open the door to more musicals and even comedies, the public would likely take the award more seriously.

Also benefiting from increased exposure was "Capote," which won a best actor Globe for Philip Seymour Hoffman, and "Transamerica," which garnered a best actress Globe for Felicity Huffman. Each picture more than doubled its theater count as well as its weekend box office.

Beyond the post-Globes glow, director Terrence Malick trimmed 15 minutes from his 150-minute epic, "The New World," but to no avail. The historical drama ventured into 811 sites and collected a mere $4 million over the weekend after a tepid academy-qualifying limited run last year.

Despite being a major Hollywood prestige production, "The New World" also made less over the weekend than the independently produced and distributed Christian drama, "End of the Spear," which has similar white-man-meets-natives trappings.

"The New World" was always going to be a risky venture commercially — Malick's approach is not crowd-pleasing, as witnessed with "The Thin Red Line," and the subject matter of early American exploration and settling is usually ignored in theaters.

Still, "The New World" sold fewer tickets out of the gate than either of the two Christopher Columbus flops from 1992, "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" and "1492: Conquest of Paradise."