Or in short, it was a case of cooking the books by Democratic operatives buying large blocks of tickets to inflate the viewership numbers. It will be VERY interesting to see how it fares against Spiderman 2 when it comes out Wednesday in over 3,500 screens. Given that Spiderman 2 will have from June 30 to July 5 for a full holiday weekend count, I expect Spiderman 2 to make around US$145 million by the end of July 5th, while Fahrenheit 9/11 will probably add another US$10 million to its total by the same date.
"Or in short, it was a case of cooking the books by Democratic operatives buying large blocks of tickets to inflate the viewership numbers."
I've seen this claim asserted in a number of places in this discussion, and I've got to wonder why people think this is an important fact. When POC came out, churches were buying blocks of tickets so parishioners could see and discuss the movie. This seemed like a good thing to me then, and seems like an equally reasonable thing now. Regardless of the political bent of the movie or its viewers, I wouldn't be surprised if people wanted to see it in groups and discuss it with their friends. If, as Christopher Hitchens suggests, it is a transparent piece of crap, then discussion might be a good thing.
Cheers!
Everett Volk