Jesus versus King Kong

By Joshua Tyler Dec 25, 2005, 18:31 GMT

Triple Academy Award® winner Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) directs the dramatic adventure King Kong, bringing his sweeping cinematic vision to the iconic story of the gigantic ape captured in the wild and brought to civilization where he meets his tragic fate. Jackson assumes directing, producing and co-screenwriting duties and surrounds himself with a list of superlative filmmaking and acting talents. Jackson re-teams with longtime collaborators Fran ...more

With a solid but not spectacular opening last weekend, Peter Jackson's mega-monkey movie needs a great second week in order to live up to the expectations of Universal and just about everyone else. Early data suggests that isn't going to happen. In fact, 'King Kong' may not even end up at number one.

'Kong's' main competition is 'The Chronicles of Narnia', a film in its third week of release and still doing strong business. Early estimates from Friday suggest it'll be a blockbuster race between the two movies to determine who takes the holiday season's number one spot.

Conflicting data from Friday and Saturday puts them both very close. Noted box office tracker BoxOfficeMojo lists 'Kong' as Friday's probable winner, with a very solid take of $8.025 million to 'Narnia's' $7.9 million. ShowBizData on the other hand predicts 'Narnia' as the winner for Saturday, with a single day take of $4.98 million. Their predictors put 'Kong' in close second with $4.90 million.

'Narnia' expanded into more theaters over the holidays. It's now showing more places than 'Kong' and its slightly shorter running time makes it easier for theaters to fit in more showings. 'King Kong' has the better critical consensus but not necessarily better word of mouth. Christian groups are pushing hard for their parishioners to get out and watch the loose Christ-allegory in 'Chronicles of Narnia'.

Final box office results probably won't be out until Tuesday because of the holidays. Right now anything is possible in the box office duel between these Hollywood giants vying for your money.