'Ring' Rules Them All

Dec. 24 -- The eagerly-awaited fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring sent the rest of the week's new releases running for cover, winning the weekend box-office sweepstakes with a powerful gross of $45.2 million.

Two other new releases did well by targeting specific market groups — the computer-animated Nickelodeon spin-off Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (which opened in third) and the potheads-at-Harvard farce How High with rappers Method Man and Redman (the No. 5 movie) — while the latest from Jim Carrey (The Majestic, No. 8) and Tim Allen (Joe Somebody, No. 9) tanked with a vengeance.

Rings' first weekend set no records, but it made good on the promise of its strong Wednesday-Friday numbers and stands a good chance of leading the field for at least another week. In addition to the $73.1 million the adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's cult novel has grossed since its midweek opening, it has pulled in an additional $60 million in 15 other countries.

Strong reviews and word of mouth are likely to expand the movie's appeal past the author's fan base, and, like many ultra-long movies that become major hits (and are limited to three screenings a day at most theaters by their length), it's likely to play for many months before heading off to video. And New Line Cinema doesn't have to worry about the public forgetting about their movie by the time the sequel hits: the second and third installments in the trilogy are in the can and ready to go for the 2002 and '03 holiday seasons.

This weekend's numbers are red meat for Hollywood Stock Exchange types with an interest in the relative merits of star power. The star-packed Ocean's Eleven continued to assert itself as the season's biggest adult hit with its second strong No. 2 finish in a row, while Tom Cruise's cerebral thriller Vanilla Sky sank to fourth after coming in on top last week. And the dismal openings of The Majestic and Joe Somebody indicate a return to spastic physical comedy and the safe confines of television could respectively be in the cards for Jim Carrey and Tim Allen, two funnymen whose drawing power just ain't what it used to be.