Stuart Little Is Big Cheese

Last weekend Oscar hopefuls Magnolia, Snow Falling on Cedars and The Cider House Rules went into wider release, but none of them cracked the top five in box office returns.

The Early Show Contributor Gail O'Neill reports that during the first weekend of the new year the box office numbers drop considerably as kids go back to school and adults return to work. This year is no different.

The following are some of the movies that made the top of the charts:

A lack of mainstream films helped Stuart Little remain the big cheese at the box office.

"Family films this holiday season have done particularly well because there weren't too many of them," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitors Relations Co.

"Last year at this time we had You've Got Mail, Patch Adams, Stepmom - these are really mainstream-appeal films but they weren't necessarily Oscar contenders," he adds.

But this year serious films hoping for Oscars are inundating the theaters. Some are finding an audience, but others are having a hard time.

Magnolia opened with the highest per-screen average of the to10, but still managed to only come in at No. 7.

Snow Falling on Cedars opened a disappointing 10th, and The Cider House Rules, on less than a third of the screens that Stuart Little is on, came in 13th.

All of these films are going after Oscars and the same audience.

"So what has happened is you got the adult audience pulled in so many different directions that (it) is tough to make choices," explains Dergarabedian.

"Audiences are going to fragment off and find one or two of these films that they really love and kind of stick with those," he says, adding, "What will help any of these films to break out of the pack is word of mouth."

And if these films aren't enough, The Hurricane, Girl, Interrupted, The End of the Affair and Angela's Ashes will pursue the same audience in the coming weeks.

The film with the most Oscar buzz continues to be American Beauty, which opened in early fall, and has made more than $70 million so far.

"This particular holiday season, when all the grosses are in,...I think, studios will look at this as sort of a model of maybe how possibly to do things differently," Dergarabedian says.