As the greenies would say, that’s unsustainable. Comic books used to be common. If you went in any kids house in the 50s or early 60s you would probably find some. Not so much anymore. Comics once sold everywhere magazines were sold. You could buy them in drug stores, supermarkets, seven-elevens, newsstands, even some liquor stores. But the so called “newsstand market” was a hostile place to comics publishers, and a shrinking one.

These days, it’s hard to find comics anywhere outside of the comic book store. That means that comics have become a “destination product.” It’s something you need to know where it’s sold, you have to physically go there and if you’re lucky, they might have what you’re looking for. However, most comics retailers order to sell out. So the odds are, you may be unlucky if you don’t come on “comics day,” the day the books come in from the distributor.

And that’s another problem with comics these days. There is only one distributor. When I got in the business in the mid 80s, there were around ten distributors. But over the years they all went under leaving Diamond Comics as the sole place publishers can distribute through to the “Direct Market,” as we call it. It’s like government run health care, if there’s only one place to go for your needs, you have to like their terms.

To complicate matters, the stresses of running a comics distributor in this economy has hurt the last remaining company. They have had their share of layoffs and warehouse closings. If that wasn’t scary enough for comics pros, Marvel just got bought by Disney, DC just reorganized under Warner Brothers, and long time publisher Paul Levitz was moved out. There is now a Hollywood person running DC. The future of the direct market may be uncertain at this point.

Marvel and DC are what we call the “Big Two.” They are the largest and oldest publishers in the business. They drive the industry. If they decided to pull out of the direct market for some reason, they would effectively be turning out the lights on the rest of the publishers. There are many other comics publishers, but they can’t live on the book store market alone.

This situation is reminiscent of the industry in the late 70s. Newsstand distribution for comics was dying off and Marvel and DC were on the ropes. DC was looking to go to reprint material. No new stories. But a couple things happened that saved comics at that point, the birth of the “direct market” and the success of “Superman: The Movie,” and a few years later, the movie “Batman.” These re-energized the business in a big way which lead to a new boom in the early 90s.

Besides distribution, the other problem with comics now is the cost. You used to easily be able to sample new comics because they were so cheap. Now, if you can find them, they cost so much it’s hard for the average person to give a new book a try. That makes it extremely hard for new books to make it. And the industry needs to ideas. It can’t rely purely on old characters to keep going.

Enter the digital age. When music downloading became popular, fans started scanning comic book pages and uploading whole comics series online to torrent sites. In Japan, they started making comics (aka manga) available for download on your cell phone. And many comics started to run exclusively on the Internet. Marvel even started making their books available on the web by subscription to the service.

Print is dying, not just for newspapers and magazines. The cost of printing and paper, the problems with accounting for sales and waste in the newsstand business is what made it unviable for comics. Newspapers, magazines and books have been feeling the pinch for years. But the digital age is showing them a new path to future growth.

Digital book readers like Amazon’s Kindle started to grow in popularity. Sony’s Reader looked to be a threat, but now Apple’s rumored tablet PC may become the iPod for readable media.

Tablet PCs will be the future of the personal computer, being lighter than laptops, having touch screen interfaces, it will be like having a notepad you can take anywhere and work on. Except it will have Internet access, it’ll be a computer and you’ll be able to use it to read any book or comic. You can read in bed, on the beach, the toilet, everywhere you can take a book or magazine.

According to the Chicago Sun Times, major publishers may even be working with a software company to bring comics to that medium. And this can be a game changer.

Like iTunes was to music, electronic publishing on a tablet PC will be much more appealing than reading a comic on a computer monitor. With a tablet PC, you aren’t stuck to your desk or a heavy laptop. The tablet PCs will be as light as a book. Lighter even.

But even better, the two strikes against current comics will be removed. They will no longer be “destination products.” You will be able to get them anywhere, download them from the net right onto your tablet. And they will no longer be cost prohibitive. You might even see the return of the 25 cent comic. Imagine that.

Books, magazines and newspapers will more than likely follow suit.

And the tablet won’t be the only place you can get your comics. Marvel has just signed a deal with a company called Panelfly to bring comics to the iPhone. Expect to see the software or a competitor migrate to Google’s Android, as that open source platform will become more ubiquitous than Apple’s.

So if the “big two” decide to bail on the direct market (which we all hope they don’t), there are still plenty of places comics can go to survive. If anything, the future of comics looks bright if they can escape the shackles of print media.

For traditionalists who like the old printed form, there will always be collected trades. Those are increasingly available in book stores which is the other place comics have migrated to.

Disney studio representatives predict that this latest adaptation of the Dickens classic will do well over time, like Zemeckis’s 2004 The Polar Express. My assessment is that the biggest element limiting the film’s appeal in the pre-release period was the annoyingly frenetic and superficial quality suggested by its promotional trailers and commercials.

Jim Carrey’s noisiness appears to be wearing quite thin, and a film that features him as not only the protagonist but also three other characters sounds like far too much of a no longer good thing. Carrey would do well to follow the path of the equally obnoxious Robin Williams and move on to more serious film roles, even if it kills his career. Yes, I’m well aware that Carrey’s occasional serious performances have been pretty awful, but he’s dead either way, and it would be best to die with honor instead of ignominy.

Carrey is following in Williams’s footsteps in one way, however: the making of idiotic political pronouncements. Talking with the Chicago Tribune to promote A Christmas Carol a few days before the film’s release, Carrey released the following burst of political flatulence:

“I was thinking about it this morning, how this story ties into everything we’re going through,” says Carrey, who, thanks to the technology, plays Scrooge as well as the three ghosts haunting him. “Every construct we’ve built in American life is falling apart. Why? Because of personal greed and ambition. Capitalism without regulation can’t protect us against personal greed.. . .

Making certain that many people reading the interview will resolutely avoid seeing the film, Carrey describes the protagonist as follows:

“Scrooge is the ultimate example of self-loathing,” Carrey says, noting that, after playing the title character in Ron Howard’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” he was merely “going to the source” in fleshing out Scrooge.
“Beware the unloved, I always say,” Carrey continues. “They’re the ones that end up being the mean guys. It comes from that deep, spiritual acid reflux within them. With Scrooge it infects his whole being.”

Whereas Dickens presented a reasonably nuanced view of the issues the story brings up, and did so with an appropriate narrative tone, Carrey makes the latest film version sound like a ham-fisted socialist diatribe, hardly a strategy for drawing middle American families in great numbers.

Zemeckis, for his part, avoided making any big political claims about the film. That’s the wise course, and given the already annoying qualities suggested by the commercials and trailers for the film, the last thing his version of A Christmas Carol needs is for its star to blunder around the media with claims that this energetic fantasy is any kind of brief for socialism.

Briefly, “A Christmas Carol” is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge (Jim Carrey), a miser who hoards his money and pays his single employee, Bob Cratchit (Gary Oldman), the bare minimum. Scrooge lives alone in a huge, dark mansion, leading a lonely life. When his nephew Fred (Colin Firth) invites him to Christmas dinner, Scrooge berates him for being happy when he has so little money. When local charity representatives ask for support, Scrooge tells them that he supports the poor through paying taxes. “Are there no work houses? Are there no prisons?” Scrooge asks. To him, taxes are all the dues he owes to society.

Seven years after his business partner Jacob Marley (also Oldman) died, on Christmas Eve, Marley’s ghost returns to visit Scrooge and warn him about the consequences of a life selfishly lived. The money Marley hoarded in life is now chained to him in death, weighing upon him as he wanders the world without rest. Marley foretells the coming of three ghosts to show Scrooge the error of his ways. The rest of the film chronicles the visit of those ghosts and their lasting impression on Scrooge’s life.

Visually the film stuns as it takes 3D flight through London streets. It captures Christmas in all its fun, beauteous glory, but also Hell on earth in its haunting future. From the end of the Ghost of Christmas Present through the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the film’s darkness make the early November, post-Halloween release more fitting than an early December, pre-Christmas one would be. The story occasionally lags as Zemeckis shows off what he can do with animation and 3D. While the vocal acting is good, the animation can’t quite portray the more emotional moments.

But the main message—keeping the Christmas spirit alive through joyful, selfless giving—rings true. And in today’s culture of big government takeover, it is a lesson that grows increasingly important daily.

Toward the end of the Ghost of Christmas Present’s visit, he shows Scrooge two scrawny children hidden beneath his cloak. They are Ignorance and Want. “They are man’s,” the ghost tells Scrooge. The ghost attacks Scrooge’s philosophy that it is the responsibility of government-run work houses and prisons to care for the disadvantaged in society.

It is important to note that Scrooge, though he does not care at all about the fate of the poor, notes that it is indeed someone’s responsibility to do something. It just isn’t his beyond what he gives in taxes. It is the government’s role. This ideology separates conservatives and liberals, and is important to note as Congress considers health care and unemployment benefits legislation.

In Dickens’ time, prisons and work houses were dismal government-run institutions programmed to discourage the poor from remaining so. Prisons were terrible in those days—see other Dickens works for evidence of that—and work houses, as City University of New York professor Gertrude Himmelfarb notes in her article, “Welfare and Charity: Lessons from Victorian England,” were meant to be demeaning and degrading to encourage the poor to look for dignified work.

This harsh government action seems uncivilized today, but it was really a correction to the original Poor Law system, which had made relief too easily available, encouraging laziness and increasing the number of poor in England. As Himmelfarb notes, “public authorities cannot really judge the merit of individual claimants for relief.” This deceives recipients into believing that they have a right to relief, removing the incentive to work. It also creates animosity between the poor recipient and the taxed donor.

But charity is different, and it is charity, not government welfare, that Dickens supports. As editor Jonah Goldberg notes in a brief article on National Review Online, often those who oppose government welfare are more charitable than those who support it. While welfare and charity attempt to accomplish similar goals, they have one striking, fundamental difference: freedom. Welfare from a government entity draws funding from involuntary taxation. This guaranteed income leads to greater administrative cost, less effectiveness, and low selectivity. Charity relies on free will, and is generally more effective because funds are given willingly to causes that donors care about. Charities can specify to whom funds are given, and also what the recipient must do to receive funds, eliminating the entitlement philosophy.

It’s interesting to note that liberals, who often accuse conservatives of supporting the wealthy, do less on their own to support the poor. Arthur C. Brooks, of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, writes in his study on religious faith and charitable giving, that conservatives, especially Christian conservatives—who tend to oppose big government and support the Republican Party—charitably contribute much more time and money than secular liberals, even when giving to non-religious, secular social interests. By looking at European countries as models, Brooks finds “a link between secular views and strikingly low levels of charitable giving and volunteering.” His findings suggest that the further the Democratic Party tends down the secular, liberal, big government path, the greater this disparity will become.

Helping the poor is a worthy goal. But our Founding Fathers did not intend the government to fund it. Nor is it healthy for the government to try. Dickens knew that, as did a great Tennessee representative from the 1800s. For a brilliant reason why governments should stay out of welfare issues, see Edward S. Ellis’ writings on Colonel David Crockett. It’s a worthy read, and though it’s a little long, at least it isn’t H.R. 3962.

But considering the plethora of culturally and politically “controversial”  (read: “contrived to be offensive for promotional notoriety”) ‘toons currently offered up for consumption like a plate of live centipedes in Interzone, the silly stuff is more than refreshing.  It’s soul food.

–

Enjoyable as it is to see conservative and libertarian viewpoints deemed worthy of existence in “South Park,” and as side-splitting as the adult humor and pop cultural references, sans a blatant political agenda, may be in “The Venture Brothers,” there has long been a need in the human psyche for pure, unadulterated lunacy. 

Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh, creators of “Disney’s Phineas and Ferb,” meet that need better than anyone since Tex Avery unleashed Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Screwy Squirrel on the animated universe, while providing the more, ahem, mature viewer the kind of witty amusement associated with Rocky and Bullwinkle dodging the sinister antics of Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale.

Pop references, literary allusions, and lightly satirical cultural commentary abound — and while these are likely to fly past little kids held fast in the spell of bright primary colors, stuff that blows up, and plots and sub-plots unfolding at light-speed — the laughs are for everybody. That’s right, laughs, and out loud, with no sudden gut-wrenching cruelty, mockery of innocence, or screaming heads blown off with shotguns.  No cartoons are injured in the production of “Phineas and Ferb,” and neither are the sensibilities of viewers jangled. 

It’s entertainment that, in the words of co-creator Jeff Marsh, “was created not just for kids, but simply did not exclude them as an audience.”  That concept works as beautifully as ever in animated comedy, and Marsh’s pal Dan Povenmire’s previous contributions to “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy” (with both guys’ work on “Rocko’s Modern Life”) make the results of their partnership and creativity fun and luminous indeed.

So what’s it about?  Kids coming up with ways to have a good time and not get bored on summer vacation.  The thin line between imagination and reality, as delineated in the classic “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strips.  Having a good, non-dysfunctional  family life, one that happens to be blended, and as normal as it can be when the stepbrothers are building a ski resort in the back yard.  It’s about the absurdity and selfishness of “evil,” as embodied by Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz, whose nefarious schemes are constantly thwarted by the boys’ pet platypus Perry, secret agent extraordinaire.  There are teen crushes and puppy love, sci-fi space adventures, Mom’s jazz band (and her nostalgia for her days as a one-hit wonder pop singer), adventures hanging out at the shopping mall, working part time jobs, volunteering for community charities, and other wholesome, everyday things.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with that?  For the benefit of those who might harbor the suspicion that life is not always fraught with anxiety and despair, not relentlessly burdened with crisis upon crisis and the existential horror of a pointless, meaningless existence, it’s clear that there’s nothing wrong with it.  In fact, it’s the sort of thing that might point in a direction a bit more upbeat– and resonant– than that which can be found in a great deal of “entertainment,” children’s show though it essentially may be.  That might be one reason why ”Phineas and Ferb” is Disney’s number one animated series.

“Phineas and Ferb” may even actually be somewhat subversive in the sense that, although it’s a Disney production, it does occasionally hint, unlike the majority of Disney products, that there could be more to dealing with life than by merely “following your heart.”  It might possibly be worthwhile to think, even if it’s only to figure out a way to do something fun on your summer vacation.

Nothing silly about that.

Proving once again its claim to the hotly contested title of Stupidest Television Network, ABC has canceled “The Goode Family” and “Surviving Suburbia,” continuing their business strategy of desperately trying new things and failing to give them a chance to succeed.

No wonder the cab/sat USA Network actually beat ABC (and the CW network) in the national ratings last week. USA’s formula of original series with unusual but likable characters and sound values carries consistently impressive audience appeal.

Although the ABC cancellations were expected–given the fact that the network had brilliantly moved both series to Friday night, a network television Dead Zone, thus guaranteeing that the shows would not be able to generate an audience over time–they nonetheless prove that ABC hates anything with decent values and ideas and cannot appreciate good, solid entertainment with real sense (Castle being the rare exception).

Expertly produced by Mike Judge (”Beavis and Butthead,” “King of the Hill,” “Office Space”), the animated sitcom “The Goode Family” expertly satirized the conformist, braindead nature of much Green thinking and brilliantly identified the movement’s evolution into a commercialized lifestyle. Judge and co. also made merciless fun of countless other aspects of lefty conventional thinking, such as the passion for being seen as encouraging homosexuality and supporting public radio and other big-government nonsense.

They accomplished all this, moreover, while managing to make the central characters likable in spite of the silliness of their pursuits, by emphasizing their good intentions.

Naturally, Disney-owned ABC, widely known as the “gayest” network and a tireless promoter of statist hedonism, couldn’t tolerate the program once it realized what Judge and co. were actually delivering.

Given the high expense of animated shows, it’s unlikely that “The Goode Family” will be picked up by a cable network. It would seem perfect for Fox, of course, but that network seems committed to destroying the last semblances of taste and common sense in this society through its presentation of Seth McFarlane animated shows such as “Family Guy” and “American Dad.”

Like “The Goode Family,” the Bob Saget sitcom “Surviving Surburbia” was a sprightly, often satirical comedy which promoted sound values. Naturally, it couldn’t last on the network that has long promoted itself as the youthful, innovative, clever alternative but has in fact become a stagnant, boring bastion of statist hedonism.

Coming after the cancellation of the interesting and appealingly unconventional police comedy-drama “The Unusuals,” the jettisoning of “The Goode Family” and “Surviving Suburbia” show that even as it plunges ever-further into the ratings basement, ABC refuses to deviate from its evident mission of pushing modern liberalism instead of providing good, appealing television.

In an age where Dreamworks’ feeds us a steady diet of kung-fu pandas and boogie-in-your-butt lemurs voiced by the guy that gave us Borat, three-to-thirteen year olds have a place to fill up on some traditional values – Disney/Pixar.  

My wife and I took our 6-year old boy to see Up on Saturday to a packed movie theater in Washington, DC’s Georgetown neighborhood.  All we heard in the theater was laughing, deep emotion and applause. And why not?  Up is film that, had it been produced with live actors decades ago, may have starred Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant.  It is classic American storytelling – true love, big dreams, self-reliance and fierce determination. It doesn’t need gimmicks, politically correct characters or audience focus-group testing to determine its destination.  It relies on Russell, who misses his Dad, and Carl Fredricksen, a lost old curmudgeon grieving over the death of his wife – they get us where we’re going.  You know them – they’re the sort of folks we see and meet most everyday.  

It’s crystal clear — the golden age of animation has returned to the American cinema since Pixar made Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Wall-E and Up.  Pixar virtually invented CGI animation, but masters such as John Lasseter, Brad Bird and others have remembered that dazzling audiences with the computer doesn’t really matter if you can’t remember to have healthy dose of humanity.  Case-in-point: the exchange between 8-year-old Russell to old man Fredricksen – when walking though the jungles of South America, Russell recounts a simple day with his estranged Dad as they counted cars on the curb of a local ice cream shop. “That might sound boring,” Russell says with a flushed face, “but it’s what I remember most.”  

“Wonder and interest doesn’t have to come out of pizazz and spectacle and huge ideas. … I always knew that the power came from the small, and not from the big,” Wall-E director Andrew Stanton told Newsweek earlier this year. Oh, there may not be any sure-fire Happy Meal spin-offs, or top-40 hip-hop smash hits in Up, but that’s never what has made lasting, and ultimately successful, cinema. 

With all this good feeling, there has to be a catch, right?  Sure!  More and more, Pixar is coming under scrutiny from feminist critics who would rather see female lead characters featured in their films. Seemingly, themes on the the do-not-call-attention-to-list are a father’s undying quest for the well being of a son (Nemo), the willpower and love of an elderly man (Up) or the robot love of Wall-E (apparently, even though the female robot was clearly superior – the film was named after the male robot, and thus, inviting to criticism).  

But, hey – it’s summer.  Can’t we all just get along? If you want to remember how glorious it is to find true love, to dream the dreams of a child and then find out how life ends up after all that falls apart, Up is your movie…

Disney had taken miles of extraordinary footage from the long-running English nature series and condensed and shaped it into a story of sorts: mama polar bear and her cubs emerge out of hibernation in the arctic snow, with the adorable babies blinking at their first sight of the summer sun. She begins the task of teaching them to survive. Papa bear, meanwhile, or “dad” as he’s known in the narration, is off on the ice floe, trying to catch a seal for his dinner. But “global warming” is making this difficult to do as the ice is breaking up earlier than usual. Dad falls into the frigid water and begins swimming for his life. He swims and swims till he gets to Antarctica where there is an abundance of seals. But dad is too weak from all that swimming, can’t nab a seal, and lies down and dies. End of family.

Now, polar bears don’t mate; they copulate and split. “Dad” has never seen the cubs he spawned and never will. Neither is he any longer interested in mom nor she in him. It’s not a family. And “dad” is, in all probability, played by a number of polar bears from different episodes in the original series. This sad downer of a story has been cobbled together by the Disney writers to make a point: we Homo sapiens are a mortal danger to families and to our beautiful planet.

After a lucrative opening weekend, moviegoers realized that this picture was not something they wanted to take junior to see, and business fell off sharply. The movie could have made a fortune if an uplifting story had been created. Sure, nature can be treacherous and the world is often a dangerous place to live in. But that’s not the main fact of life. The main fact of life is that a gloriously beautiful and perfectly designed planet (and universe) has been created for us and for all our animal and vegetable co-inhabitants (my brother the carrot). Sunrises and sunsets are thrilling; even rainstorms and hurricanes are breathtaking. The BBC photographers captured all of this and the Disney film does show a lot of it, including the mass migration of thousands and thousands of animals. But of course, they focus in on the one baby elephant that gets separated from the herd and wanders off to starve to death. Hour upon hour of glorious footage, filmed by brilliant and intrepid photographers are turned into an agitprop picture condemning consumerism and capitalism.

“Wall-E,” a brilliant animated picture, is another example of the Disney crowd using its powerful creativity to send a message to the younger set: we are destroying the earth. “We” meaning, of course, America with its incredibly successful production of “stuff”. And like all good propaganda, it has more than a kernel of truth to it. The waste in this country is overwhelming. I don’t object to reasonable preachment in favor of conservation and against waste. What pisses me off is the fact that the cultural left is frightening the children. And they’re doing it on purpose. Polls of little kids have been taken which show that they are scared as hell that the earth will be an uninhabitable place to live in when they grow up.

There’s a video called “The Story of Stuff” being shown in classrooms around the country. It has been put together by a former Greenpeace employee and, to quote The New York Times, it “paints a picture of how American habits result in forests being felled, mountaintops being destroyed, water being polluted and people and animals being poisoned”. The filmmaker also complains that the federal government “spends too much on the military.”

Children are being frightened. It’s not enough that the cultural left is sexualizing them at an early age, it’s also making a generation of worrywarts out of them: trans-fats and second hand smoke and climate change and toxic this and toxic that. And who is strong enough to save us from all this? Only the government, of course; only Big Brother. Worriers tend to vote Democrat and the left is systematically manufacturing a generation of them. Child molesters belong in jail.

A shiny new Enterprise is luring in a new generation of STAR TREK fans

J.J. Abrams is officially the Lazarus of movie directors as his all-new Star Trek has gone “Boldly Gone Where No Star Trek Movie has Gone Before.” With a cast of relative unknowns, the 42-year-old has resurrected a franchise that had been killed by insular “nerdyness” and timid imagination. The Gene Rodenberry creation didn’t so much bomb as it died slowly over a period of years. First, the 2002 movie Star Trek: Nemesis starring the Next Generation cast disappointed with a meager $43.3M domestic. Then, the final TV series Enterprise, which starred Scott Bakula, was not embraced by core fans or broader audiences and was canceled after four seasons, ending May 13, 2005.

Director J.J. Abrams will definitely "Live long and prosper"

Now riding a staggering 96% Fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes – that’s 96% of America’s movie critics issuing positive reviews – The Enterprise is riding high again thanks to the creator of TV hits Alias and Lost. Try getting 96% of any group to agree on anything. It’s no small feat. Compare Star Trek’s RT score against the ratings for the last 5 Best Picture winners.

STAR TREK has better reviews than Oscars darling SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORES FOR THE LAST 5 OSCAR WINNERS
2004 – Million Dollar Baby – 91% Fresh
2005 – Crash – 75% Fresh
2006 – The Departed – 92% Fresh
2007 – No Country For Old Men – 94% Fresh
2008 – Slumdog Millionaire – 94% Fresh

The original STAR TREK cast (above) with the next generation of franchise stars

With the ringing endorsement of tough-to-please critics, Star Trek hit warp speed at the box office last night with lightly-promoted preview screenings starting at 7pm. The impeccably-reviewed feature film seized an estimated $7M or so in Thursday night ticket sales. The idea may have been to get some of the hardcore Trekkies and Trekkers out of the way, clearing multiplexes for mainstream movie audiences today, and they have showed up in massive numbers.

William Shatner (left) with Captain Kirk 2.0 Chris Pine

With Chris Pine (Bottle Shock) in the legendary role of Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto (NBC’s Heroes) wearing the pointy ears made famous by Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek has soared to a history-making $26M on its official opening day according to multiple studio execs, double the previous-best opening day for any movie in the franchise. That means in the first 29 hours of general release, the re-imagined sci-fi blockbuster has delivered an estimated $33M.

STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT had the previous-best opening day in franchise history

ALL-TIME TOP 5 OPENING DAYS FOR STAR TREK MOVIES
1. Star Trek (2009) – $26M [$33M in its first 29 hours]
2. Star Trek: First Contact (1996) – $13M
3. Star Trek: Generations (1994) – $9.7M
4. Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) – $9.5M
5. Star Trek: Nemesis (2002) – $7.7M

How will the weekend play out? The Thursday night preview screenings will probably make Star Trek a bit less front-loaded. In fact, I’m guessing that, based on word-of-mouth and its family-friendly PG-13 rating, my sources believe that the movie could get a 5% boost on Saturday to a possible $27.3M, followed by an aggressive Mother’s Day drop of 40% on Sunday. That would mean a 4-day gross of almost $77M or so.

The great news for Paramount and Abrams and Pine and Quinto and the rest of the cast is that Star Trek will almost certainly have the best legs of any of this summer’s major tent-pole movies. Rank-and-file moviegoers are likely to discover Star Trek for the first time in coming weeks or, now that Trek is cool again, it may rekindle interest with core fans who rejected the most recent incarnations.

STAR TREK could have "legs" like BATMAN BEGINS

It will not be a surprise to see Star Trek sail past $200M. After all, 2005’s Batman Begins performed that way. The Christopher Nolan Batman reboot opened on a Wednesday with $15M and had banked $72.9M in 5 days. Based on that movie’s Friday-thru-Sunday of $48.7M, the first Batman movie in 8 years reached its $205M domestic total at a 4.2 multiple (4.2 X $48.7 got Nolan’s original to $205M). Anticipating a 4.2 multiple for Star Trek is probably overreaching, but a 3.4-3.5 multiple is possible. That would propel Abrams and company to well past $200M.

Competing studio execs  tell me that X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) took a big tumble as expected. The Hugh Jackman X-Men spin-off only mustered $9.15M or so on its second Friday, but it will still likely top $27.95M for the weekend, down about 67%. Meanwhile, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) coaxed about $3M to start the frame, and it will likely be helped by Mother’s Day, grabbing a possible $10M, down a mere 35% from last weekend.

Beyonce continues to sell tickets in OBSESSED

Obsessed, the low budget sizzler from Sony Screen Gems, continues to outperform its low expectations with $2M on Friday, which pushes the Beyonce catfight flick past $50M. The thriller should finish the 3-day with about $6.25M and a spectacular $55.89M by Monday.

The urban-geared comedy Next Day Air (Summit) got off to a disappointing start with just $1.25M (likely #5 for the day), and it will drift down the top ten to #6 for the weekend with a meager $4.1M or so from its thousand or so playdates.

The Zac Efron comedy 17 Again (Warner Bros) will likely spend another weekend in the top five with about $1.15M on Friday and about $4.5M for 3 days. That will give the Efron vehicle a new domestic cume of about $54.26M.

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON EARLY FRIDAY ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Star Trek (Paramount) – $26M, $6,755 PTA, $33M
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) – $9.15M, $2,231 PTA, $111.77M cume
3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) – $3.05M, $961 PTA, $22.84M
4. Obsessed (Sony) – $2M, $769 PTA, $51.64M cume
5. NEW – Next Day Air (Summit) – $1.25M, $1,098 PTA, $1.25M  cume
6. 17 Again (Warner Bros) – $1.15M, $396 PTA, $50.91M cume
7. The Soloist (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $1M, $478 PTA, $20.89M cume
8. Monsters vs. Aliens (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $847,000, $388 PTA, $184.36M cume
9. Earth (Disney) – $697,000, $389 PTA, $24.29M cume
10. Hannah Montana: The Movie (Disney) – $690,000, $300 PTA, $72.35M cume

EXCLUSIVE STEVE MASON EARLY 3-DAY ESTIMATES
1. NEW – Star Trek (Paramount) – $69.68M, $18,103 PTA, $76.68M
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Fox) – $27.95M, $6,814 PTA, $130.57M cume
3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros) – $10.06M, $3,170 PTA, $29.86M
4. Obsessed (Sony) – $6.25M, $2,402 PTA, $55.89M cume
5. 17 Again (Warner Bros) – $4.5M, $1,550 PTA, $54.26M cume
6. NEW – Next Day Air (Summit) – $4.1M, $3,603 PTA, $4.1M  cume
7. The Soloist (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $3.6M, $1,722 PTA, $23.49M cume
8. Monsters vs. Aliens (Dreamworks/Paramount) – $3.55M, $1,625 PTA, $187.06M cume
9. Hannah Montana: The Movie (Disney) – $2.62M, $1,140 PTA, $74.29M cume
10. Earth (Disney) – $2.44M, $1,361 PTA, $26.03M cume

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.

William Shatner (left) with Captain Kirk 2.0 Chris Pine

Keep in mind that Paramount never changed its Star Trek marketing to promote the 7pm Thursday start, so the opening night audience was likely heavy on Trekkers or Trekkies (not sure which term is “politically correct” anymore). So this was a “soft” opening and what amounts to a night of word-of-mouth screenings. Keep in mind that Transformers premiered during the summer when kids are more available while Star Trek has made its premiere during the school year.

The reviews are through-the-roof at 96% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, and, as a topic, Star Trek is trending at #1 on Twitter. The reviews in the Twitterverse are just as positive.

just got back from seeing Star Trek. I am not typically a fan of sci-fi, but I really liked this movie.

Star Trek was surprisingly good, and even Star Trek newbies like myself could enjoy it.

I saw the new Star Trek last night with my son, who just turned 7. It was great; we both loved it. Next gen of Trekies/SciFi buffs is born.

I’m still pumped up from having seen Star Trek. Looking forward to seeing it tomorrow and Sunday [diff. grps].

still thinkin’ of how f*****’ awesome Star Trek was. now wanting a phaser to set from “stun” to “kill”

Go see star trek immediately. Incredible!

The new Star Trek movie was great when I went in with low expectations. It is what Nemesis was trying to accomplish and succeeded much …

for those of you who were curious. Star Trek rocked my FACE OFF. It was Shamazing! <3 Spok…*droooool*

Star Trek is fresh, funny, exciting and – biggest surprise of all – emotionally engaging.

Now the question is, “How high will The Enterprise fly on its opening day?” Seems like $20M is a lock, but it could be bigger. If the movie does $20M today, the 4-day should be $63M-$65M. $22M or better should send this spectacularly-reviewed blockbuster past $70M. If the day is $25M or better, the number for the opening 4 days could start with an 8.

I’ll be online with my Exclusive Early Friday & 3-Day Estimates as early as humanly possible tonight (Friday).

Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter@LAMase.