Santa helpful to niche pix

Trendy auds ongoing hitting movie theaters in pressure within the lengthy weekend, looking at Christmas opener "Very Noisy and extremely Close" and supporting holdovers "Mess Tailor Soldier Spy" and "The Artist."Warner Bros.' "Very Noisy" obtained a good opening-day per-screen average of $11,753 from six locations. (The studio is calculating the film will collect around $136,000 in 2 days.)"Mess Tailor," from Focus Features, published a powerful four-day per-screenaverage of roughly $22,000, having a weekend take of $1.two million at 55 theaters. Pic's domestic cume arrived at $2.3 million through Monday.Based on Focus, "Mess" is constantly on the play strongly at holdover houses for example L.A.'s Landmark, in which the film lost simply to "The Lady Using the Dragon Tattoo," beating new records "War Equine" and "Very Noisy." FilmDistrict's Julia Roberts directorial debut, "Within the Land of Bloodstream and Honey," did less in four days, calculating $9,276 from three engagements to have an believed weekend total of $27,827.In 72 hours, Chinese Oscar entry "The Flowers of War" published a good debut per-screen average of $13,982 from three playdates, with one each in NY, L.A. and Bay Area. Pic totalled almost $42,000.The Weinstein Co., meanwhile, extended a few days ago its holdover pair, "The Artist" and "My Week with Marilyn," using the latter pic playing at 602 locations, yielding an believed three-day gross just north of $888,000. But "The Artist," which performed at far less engagements (167), really did better, tallying through Monday an believed $1.4 million. "Marilyn" has cumed $7.3 million "The Artist," $2.9 million.David Glasser, chief operating officer at Weinstein, credited that towards the studio's patient rollout technique for "The Artist.""Individuals are still finding the film," Glasser stated. "Now, what we are seeing within the exits is the fact that individuals are being released from it saying, 'That wasn't things i expected.'" Contact Andrew Stewart at andrew.stewart@variety.com