KEVIN JAMES - JANUARY SETS BOX-OFFICE RECORD

JANUARY SETS BOX-OFFICE RECORD

According to box-office trackers Media by Numbers, this was the biggest January at the box office on record, with the top 12 films grossing $129 million, slightly ahead of last year's $127.7 million. The biggest earner for the month was the Kevin James comedy Paul Blart Mall Cop , which took in $83 million over the last three weeks. Somewhat surprisingly, however, three of the five films nominated for best-picture Oscars -- Milk, The Reader , and Frost/Nixon -- failed to contribute much to the overall results. Daily Variety today (Monday) devoted a feature to the poor performances of those films and cited one unnamed specialty distributor as saying, "These are three niche films that aren't breaking out. The award nominations didn't rejuvenate business, nor revive it," The trade publication observed that Fox Searchlight's The Wrestler and Miramax's Doubt , which earned Oscar nominations for their stars but failed to make the best-picture cut, will probably outperform Frost/Nixon, Milk , and The Reader.

02/02/2009