Santa useful to niche pix

Trendy auds ongoing striking cinemas in pressure inside the extended weekend, searching at Christmas opener "Very Noisy and very Close" and supporting holdovers "Mess Tailor Soldier Spy" and "The Artist."Warner Bros.' "Very Noisy" acquired a great opening-day per-screen average of $11,753 from six locations. (The studio is calculating the film will collect around $136,000 by 50 percent days.)"Mess Tailor," from Focus Features, released a effective four-day per-screenaverage of roughly $22,000, getting a weekend take of $1.2 million at 55 theaters. Pic's domestic cume showed up at $2.3 million through Monday.According to Focus, "Mess" is constantly play strongly at holdover houses for instance L.A.'s Landmark, where the film lost only to "The Woman While using Dragon Tattoo," beating new records "War Equine" and "Very Noisy." FilmDistrict's Jennifer Aniston directorial debut, "Inside the Land of Blood stream and Honey," did less in four days, calculating $9,276 from three engagements with an thought weekend total of $27,827.In 72 hrs, Chinese Oscar entry "The Flowers of War" released a great debut per-screen average of $13,982 from three playdates, with one each in NY, L.A. and San Francisco Bay Area. Pic totalled almost $42,000.The Weinstein Co., meanwhile, extended a couple of days ago its holdover pair, "The Artist" and "My Week with Marilyn," while using latter pic playing at 602 locations, yielding an thought three-day gross just north of $888,000. But "The Artist," which carried out at much less engagements (167), really did better, tallying through Monday an thought $1.4 million. "Marilyn" has cumed $7.3 million "The Artist," $2.9 million.David Glasser, chief operating officer at Weinstein, credited that for the studio's patient rollout way of "The Artist.""People continue to be locating the film," Glasser mentioned. "Now, what there has been inside the exits is always that people are now being launched from this saying, 'That wasn't a few things i expected.'" Contact Andrew Stewart at andrew.stewart@variety.com