Mike Nichols' Closer, which opened on only 476 screens over the weekend, performed far better than expected, taking in $7.7 million and winding up in fifth place. In so doing, it earned an average of $16,193 per theater, more than three times as much as Disney's National Treasure, the top film at the box office, which earned $17 million on 3,243 screens, or $5,244 per screen. Also showing surprising stamina was Warner's The Polar Express, which moved up to third place at the box office in its fourth week as it took in $10.8 million. Its total has now reached $96.1 million.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Exhibitor Relations (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date): 1. National Treasure, Disney, $17,004,967, 3 Wks. ($110,113,345); 2. Christmas With the Kranks, Sony, $11,163,492, 2 Wks. ($44,926,841); 3. The Polar Express, Warner Bros., $10,778,094, 4 Wks. ($96,127,863); 4. The Incredibles, Disney, $9,015,796, 5 Wks. ($225,858,787); 5. Closer, Sony, $7,707,972, (New); 6. The Spongebob Squarepants Movie, Paramount, $7,655,872, 3 Wks. ($68,209,314); 7. Alexander, Warner Bros., $4,756,445, 2 Wks. ($29,687,331); 8. Finding Neverland, Miramax, $2,824,222, 4 Wks. ($11,683,573); 9. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Universal, $2,761,455, 4 Wks. ($36,321,105); 10. Ray, Universal, $1,888,860, 6 Wks. ($67,792,750).

A member of the Walt Disney board of directors on Monday appeared to give shareholders who are suing the company much ammunition, then snatched it away. The shareholders claim that the board merely rubber-stamped Michael Eisner's decision to hire Michael Ovitz and then fire him the following year at a cost of $140 million in severance. Gary Wilson, currently chairman of Northwest Airlines and formerly Disney's CFO, said in court: "I deferred to Mr. Eisner since he was the creative operating executive who headed the company and would therefore be the person who knew the qualifications he wanted in a president." But, to paraphrase Seinfeld, Wilson seemed to suggest that there was nothing necessarily wrong with that. "A board is responsible for hiring the CEO, Wilson said. "Anybody under the CEO should clearly be selected by the CEO and is usually discussed by certain directors, but doesn't have to be. ... Mr. Eisner has to make his own decisions about what he needs under him."

Prior to entering a jam-packed Christmas weekend competition, Miramax has decided to premiere its Leonardo DiCaprio starrer Aviator on Dec. 17 in about 25 theaters. "We're opening the 17th to establish the movie and get reviews out," Miramax COO Rick Sands told today's (Tuesday) Daily Variety. Likewise, 20th Century Fox has adopted a similar strategy for the same weekend with its remake of Flight of the Phoenix. Both studios plan to open their respective films wide the following week, which includes the Christmas holiday, where they will compete against Universal's Meet the Fockers, Disney's The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Fox's Fat Albert and Warner's The Phantom of the Opera and Darkness.

One of the consequences of the introduction of high-definition DVDs will be that it will take a day or more to download them from the Internet, making copyright infringement "super, super, super inconvenient," Time Warner chairman Dick Parsons told a media conference in New York Monday. Parsons indicated that he does not expect the movie industry to face the kind of downloading threat that the music industry has had to deal with, given the fact that it is so much more difficult to copy a movie online than it is to copy a CD. Meanwhile, the Japanese electronics companies Toshiba and Memory-Tech announced today (Tuesday) that they have developed a disk in which a standard-play DVD recording can be combined with a high-definition one, each on different "layers." The format, the companies noted, would ease the transition from the current format to HDTV since buyers of the disks would not have to be concerned about them becoming obsolete once they purchase high definition TV sets.

Putting into perspective the limited opportunities posed by the Internet as a distribution vehicle for motion pictures, the online video-on-demand site CinemaNow has disclosed that its one-time offering of Fahrenheit 9/11 on election eve had a total of just 89 customers and grossed $885.55. Nevertheless, in an interview with Daily Variety, a spokesperson for CinemaNow, which is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment, described the Fahrenheit online debut as "a success."

Although ABC replaced its top-rated Desperate Housewives with a movie Sunday night, the movie, Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven, drew some heavenly ratings of its own and gave the network a win for the night. While not reaching the rating peaks of Housewives, the movie nevertheless dominated the primetime period between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. averaging an 11.9 rating and a 17 share. (The 7:00 hour, as usual, was won by CBS's 60 Minutes, which this week featured a rare interview with Bob Dylan.) Heaven drew its biggest ratings in Detroit, where Albom is a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. In that city the show scored a 22.6/30. Heaven was the highest-rated original movie to air on ABC since Pt. 1 of the Judy Garland miniseries Me and My Shadows drew a 12.1/18 in Feb. 2001. ABC remained in first place on Monday, thanks to Monday Night Football (11.0/18), a night of repeats on CBS (9.6/14) and an NBC lineup (7.7/11) that included the dismally rated (6.6/10) second part of a two-part documentary about Princess Diana that aired in the 10:00 hour.

Personal digital video recorders like TiVo, Replay and those provided by some cable and satellite companies have yet to pose a threat to commercial television, according to a study conducted by CBS. Speaking at a media conference in New York Monday, David Poltrack, the network's chief audience researcher, observed that even when DVR viewers fast-forward past commercials, many still recall the names of the sponsors whose ads they're skipping. He also estimated that if the number of people who watch the 20 top-rated shows on a delayed basis was added to the number who watch them in real time, the ratings for those shows would nearly double.

Scotsman Craig Ferguson has been named to succeed Craig Kilborn as permanent host of CBS's The Late Late Show, the network announced today (Tuesday). Ferguson is best known in the U.S. as the boss on ABC's The Drew Carey Show.

Martha Stewart is likely to go from jail to NBC next season, published reports indicated today (Tuesday). The reports said that Stewart is likely to paid $8 million annually to replace Jane Pauley in morning/afternoon syndication. Pauley's ratings have remained below average since her talk show debuted earlier this year; however, NBC denied Monday that it had any plans to replace her.

The enormous axe hanging over the heads of BBC workers for months finally fell today (Tuesday) as the public corporation announced that it will fire about 5,000 employees, representing 11 percent of its workforce -- a move that will save it about $624 million annually, about 10 percent of its budget. The announcement was made by the BBC's new director general, Mark Thompson, who also said that the company would move production of several sports and children's TV programs -- as well as Radio Five Live -- from London to Manchester.

Once again demonstrating that it can thumb its nose at the powers-that-be so long as its ratings remain strong, The Simpsons on Sunday featured a Fox News satellite truck sporting a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker. The Simpsons airs on the Fox television network, a corporate sibling of Fox News, which continues to deny that it slants its programming in favor of the White House administration. In an email to New York Daily News media critic Lloyd Grove, Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales wrote that the cartoon sequence was "pretty ballsy since The Simpsons plays on the Fox network, but it also shows how firm is the image of Fox News as Bush whores."