I’m sure Roland Emmerich who, according to Nikki Finke, is receiving 25 percent of the grosses for his $200 million budgeted “2012,” is also feeling pretty good. Of course, now he has to figure out if he about to earn enough money for his own end-of-world-blocking fortress of solitude in case all those prophesies he used to come up with his critically dismissed thriller come true.

Emmerich’s latest multi-star epic earned an estimated $65 million, at the very highest end of the most optimistic projections put forth by Jolly Carl DiOrio that I mentioned on Thursday night. If you throw in the worldwide figures going back to the film’s international release last Wednesday, then you get to a figure of around $225 million so far. As per Variety‘s Pamela McClintock, assuming there are no surprises, this puts Sony’s PG-13 epic in the #9 spot on the top 10 for international opening weekends.

At #2 spot this weekend is the Disney/Jim Carrey/Robert Zemeckis CGI-3D revisit of “A Christmas Carol,” which, despite character designs that embody the unpleasant after effects of a visit to the uncanny valley, is holding up extremely well after what was deemed a disappointing opening last weekend. Charles Dickens’ unkillable holiday perennial only dropped about 25-26% or so, about half of what many films do, and collected a very respectable estimated $22.3 million. After it’s a truly steep fiscal drop all the way down to an estimated $6.2 million for “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” It seems to me there’s nothing more problematic at the box office than a prestige picture with a critical/online buzz response that amounts to “meh” — or in this case “meeeahhhh.” That’s an apparent 52% “many films” drop from last week.

Indeed, this week brings us the spectacle of a goat herd of A-listers being upstaged by an abused, severely overweight teen as the critically lauded by overtitled “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” shot up to #4 spot despite being in only 174 theaters. That means it earned it roughly $6.1 million on 2,279 less screens that “Goats” needed to earn an additional $0.1 million.

However, as good as the $35,000 per screen average for “Precious” was, taking a look at the Box Office Mojo weekend chart, the highest per screen went to Fox’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” The old-school puppet animation comedy earned a very nice estimated average of $65,000 on four screens and is, weeks before its wide release, already going a long way toward burnishing the reputation of writer-director Wes Anderson who, as far as this writer is concerned, has never shot an uninteresting foot of film.

Still, it wasn’t all hearts and flowers for the indies this weekend. Despite some outstanding coverage by Mr. Will Harris at our fabulous sister site, “Pirate Radio” failed to receive the Bullz-Eye bump. The ensemble comedy, inspired by illegal British broadcasting outfits of the sixties and seventies that competed with the BBC by blasting out the latest in rowdy beat music, earned a very non-rocking  estimated $2.9 million, slipping just below Richard Kelly’s $3.2 million 10th place thriller, “The Box.”  On the other hand, that does mean that “Pirate Radio” went to 11.

Variety, however, added insult to injury and the #1 movie found itself a subhead on its opening weekend. The trade paper of record instead led with the record-breaking per-screen average of the first new Oscar contender of the winter season, Lions Gate’s “Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire” which only placed 13th on the Box Office Mojo charts with an estimate of $1.8 million — but did so with an truly awe-inspiring per-screen average of $100,000 on 18 screens in L.A., New York, Chicago, and Atlanta. For comparison, the week’s second highest per-screen average went to “La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet,” a new dance documentary by cinema vérité legend Frederick Wiseman with $14,000 on a single screen. This is obviously a ridiculously good start for a dysfunctionality-driven drama with some markedly uncommercial aspects to it. I also have to wonder if the theaters it was playing in were somewhat larger than the usual arthouse venues.

The association of “Precious” with after-the-fact executive producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, who both literally bought into the film after seeing it but will be reportedly donating whatever money they make on the film to charity, obviously paid off here with largely African-American audiences. There’s little reason, however, to expect that the film won’t “cross over” with all ethnicities thanks to Oscar buzz and mostly great reviews. Still, I’d also argue that more traditional art-house style numbers later in its run are a real possibility. It is worth noting that the nine theaters it’s playing in the L.A. area are demographically fascinating, straddling predominantly black areas and the liberal, indie-friendly west side of town and have me resisting the urge to give you a history of Los Angeles ethnic politics. Somebody knows what they’re doing.

Holding up the #2 spot is, not surprisingly, the Michael Jackson documentary, “This Is It,” which has ridden good worth-of-mouth to drop less than 40% and earn an estimated $14 million on its second weekend. Doing perhaps a bit better than expected, given that stars — at least stars with an average age north of 40 — no longer seem to have much impact at the box-office, the name-laden satirical comedy, “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” managed an estimated $13.3 million in the #3 spot. Considering the $25 million budget, pretty modest for a film with four fairly major actors, and the “meh”-to-sub-“meh” reviews for a movie that should be critical cat-nip, that’s really not bad at all. Being the only new comedy in some time probably helped.

Nipping at the goat-starers’ heels was “The Fourth Kind,” which engages in some “based on a true story” quasi-mock-doc shenanigans. Though I made sport of it last time, there really is a sucker born every minute and enough of them had $10.00 handy this weekend for the science fiction flick to net an estimated $12.5 million. Somewhere, the ghost of William Castle is smiling.

The weekend’s other new release was one-time “Donnie Darko” whiz kid Richard Kelly’s dark science fiction tale, “The Box.” Not too surprisingly, the “Twilight Zone”-like tale fell short of “Paranormal Activity” — hanging in very nicely with an estimated $8.6 million and sure to cross the $100 million mark shortly — and came in at sixth place with an estimate of roughly $7.9 million.

Anyhow, the clear winner over the next few days will almost certainly be yet another version of Charles Dicken’s constantly remade and revisited holiday perennial, this time from Disney, “A Christmas Carol.” Jim Carrey stars as Scrooge, who won’t hurt at the box office and Robert Zemeckis, in his “Polar Express” mode, is at the helm. Personally, while I found the earlier motion-capture movie a fun visceral thrill ride in Imax 3-D, despite a story that was the very definition of treacle, I personally find this style of animation extremely ugly; it’s as if it’s always stuck in the armpit of the Uncanny Valley. Moreover critics, including our own David Medsker, complain that Zemeckis gets carried away with the effects and makes things a bit too visceral and scary for the film’s own good. Still, if it worked even for Mr. Magoo, there’s no reason to think it won’t work well enough for some fiscal redemption. THR‘s Carl DiOrio, whose nearly as jolly as an way-too-early St. Nick, is guessing it’ll grab about $40 million in premature yuletide cheer. A split decision by critics is, I suppose, neither here nor there.

After that, we have four films that will be duking it out with two extant strong releases, Michael Jackson’s ghostly final bow, “This Is It,” which may benefit from better than expected word of mouth and, of course, the horrifyingly profitable “Paranormal Activity.” Intriguingly, all these new major releases have a slightly spooky and/or “paranormal” spin and trying to guess which will do best is probably about as wise as playing with a Ouija board at a demon-infested San Diego townhome.

However, if traditional values and star power still mean anything all, the most likely third or fourth placer is, “The Men Who Stare at Goats” which brings us George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Ewan McGregor, and Kevin Spacey in an R-rated semi-Strangelovian semi-dark comedy from Overture about military guys messing about with supposed psychic powers (which may have actually happened once or twice in real history.) This is the kind of material I personally eat up with a spoon, and even researched for various terrible and/or unwritten screenplays in another life. Still, I ain’t audiences and the buzz on this one from the festival circuit was fairly muted and the critics are just on the positive side of “meh.” On the other hand, Variety reports that it’s “tracking” well and considering the lack of fresh comedy contenders in theaters right now and the presence of four very reliable performers, this would appear to be the one to bet on among the lower-profile new releases. What I wouldn’t bet on it for, however, is much in the way of awards.

Now, if you really are looking for Oscar contenders as we near the traditional period I call “good movie season,” you’re apparently looking a bit early. The only film with serious awards buzz this week is a limited release, the critically buzzed dark drama “Precious.” With an assist from Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey, who’ve lent their names and their dollars to the release, this adaptation of a popular novel, “Push” — about a sexually abused, dysfunctional teen with a non-traditionally cinematic weight problem — will be opening on eighteen screens in New York, L.A., Chicago, and Atlanta.

Getting back to the theater-count big time, we have a pair of kind of decidedly off-kilter PG-13 thrillers and my not-so paranormal hunch is that they’ll likely generate a shrug from audiences. First we have the latest from backlash-beset ex-whiz kid Richard Kelly of “Donnie Darko” fame, “The Box” from Warner Brothers. As befits a major release going to more than 2,600 theaters, this is not the same kind of weirdness which had some older critics flashing back to such sixties art-monstrosities as “Myra Breckenridge” with Kelly’s last film, “Southland Tales.” Indeed, the morally fraught premise — push a button, win $1,000,000 (in seventies cash!) but also killl some random schmoe — has a bit of “Twilight Zone” appeal to it. That makes sense; it’s based on a story by Richard Matheson (the novel I Am Legend), who wrote many of the best episodes of the show. Still, it appears that Kelly has done has Kelly extra-strange thing here to some degree, which might not help commercially and appears to have divided critics, again. On the other hand, having Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, and Frank Langella as the creepy gifter won’t hurt this one.

On the other hand, I’m not sure if even the hotness of Milla Jovovich can do very much for “The Fourth Kind,” a sci-fi thriller which, in tried and true grindhouse-derived fashion, is trying — pretty lamely from the sound of it — to pass itself off as somehow fact based. As the mighty Roger reminds us, the untrue “based on a true story” gimmick is something that even worked in one genuine classic, “Fargo.” Of course, Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” also traded on the then-trendy idea that UFO’s could actually be real alien spaceships in its ads, but mollified skeptics with a classy movie.

Especially in the wake of the intelligent marketing of “Paranormal Activity,” which stopped well short of trying to fool anyone into actually thinking it was real, I suspect the scent of cheese here will be overpowering. Indeed, my esteemed colleague Jason Zingale indicates it might be laughed off the screen. Finally, one guy’s opinion among the mostly awful reviews invoked the ghost of Edward D. Wood, Jr. and the Amazing Criswell.

Join me on Sunday for the box office results, when we’ll punish the guilty and reward the probably not-quite innocent.

* Halcyon, a somewhat odd firm with an all but empty website, has officially put its one and only asset and reason for being, the rights to “The Terminator” franchise, on the auction block. So reports Variety and Nikki Finke. Suddenly, over at Whedonesque — yes, the Joss Whedon fansite where the beloved cult TV and occasional film creator occasionally posts  — Whedon links to it and posts a very serious offer. So serious, in fact, that Finke — who occasionally claims she “doesn’t do geek” runs the item. Meanwhile, back at Whedonesque, the Whe-man and a commenter who appears to be both a fan of the Joss and the late singer-songwriter Warren Zevon (some folks are just blessed with too much taste) note an earlier serious offer.

Quote of the week (probably):

Well, here’s what I have to say to Nikki Finke: you are a fine journalist and please don’t ever notice me.

* Sony Classic has picked up the rights to “Mother and Child,” the latest film from arthouse/cable director Rodrigo Garcia, still probably best known to a lot of people as the son of Columbian literary great Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s not too surprising a pick-up, even in this tough market, given that the cast includes Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, up-and-comer Kerry Washington (“Ray,” “The Fantastic Four”), and Samuel L. Jackson.

* The box office “actuals” for most of the big releases turned out to be a couple of million higher than the estimates I reported yesterday. Sorry MJ’s ghost.

* Thinking about “The Men Who Stare at Goats” which comes out this Friday, Jeff Bridges gets appropriately trippy but not in too dudish a way.

* This is a few days old, but for those of us who find ourselves unduly fascinating by the Church of Scientology, via Kim Masters, here’s an interesting new story opened up last week. Writer-director Paul Haggis (“Crash”) announced he’s leaving the church.

* Speaking of old gossip from old people, if you somehow missed last week’s interview with 83 year old literary lion and recovering screenwriter Gore Vidal in The Atlantic, and if you’re ready to be provoked and not always in a good way, you should. For the record, I have to say that his comments about Polanski’s victim are reprehensible.

I’ve quibbled about word choices and moral grandstanding, but actually putting the blame for all of this on a 13 year-old is ridiculous and shameful. Vidal enjoys being a contrarion and has made any number of bizarre statements — mixed in with spot on observations — over the years I’ve been an admirer of his writing, but these particular remarks set a new, low bar and save for his sarcastic.

Also, while it’s possible Polanski’s image even before the incident suffered a bit for being foreign and making horror movies, there’s zero reason to think antisemitism played any role in the matter. I’m convinced of this mainly since I doubt most people even realize he’s part Jewish in terms of his ancestry. (Culturally and in terms of his upbringing, Polanski is actually probably more of a lapsed Catholic.)  Still, following something Bill Maher said far more humorously than I, considering Vidal has been a provocateur his entire life, he’s hardly going to stop now that he’s 83. I wonder what he’ll be saying at 90?