Recant

Tomorrow's Anti-CW Today! - Plus--kf blurbs Brokeback. By Mickey Kaus

Mickey Kaus, whose prediction that Brokeback Mountain would flop at the box office provoked a storm of blog discussion last month, has started the process of walking back his comment and lowering expectations that his predictions (BM flops in the heartland and makes less than $50 million) will actually come true. With the film moving up to the fifth position in the weekday box office this week--despite being in fewer than 500 theatres--even Kaus can see the writing on the wall. And so, in a discussion you can only discover by watching a video on bloggingheads.tv, Kaus talks about all the mitigating factors that might cause the movie to do better than he expected. It's already made nearly $25 million in limited release, he notes, before the anticipated success it will see at the Golden Globes on Monday, the multiple Oscar nominations it will log on January 31, and the possible victories it will see come March 5. $50 million is beginning to look like a very achieveable bar for the movie.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and predict this, instead: When all is said and done, Brokeback Mountain, a small movie about two cowboys in love, will outgross Munich, which was supposed to be this year's stealth Oscar contender and has both gravity of subject and Steven Spielberg to propel it at the box office. You can keep track of Brokeback here, and Munich here. You'll note that Munich, despite being released a few weeks later, has a $3 million lead right now. That's what makes this prediction a bold one. And it's what will make being right even sweeter!