I have been absolutely flooded with email over the past two weeks with Mogulers (yes, it is a proper noun) concerned about the performance of their slates, in particular those saddled with such underperformers as Flushed Away, Stranger Than Fiction and A Good Year. Even Deja Vu -- which had Disney Thanksgiving Blockbuster written all over it (at least it did to those of us who remember the abomination that National Treasure was ... and how it collected $173 million in total domestic box office) -- barely made $20 million over the 3-day period, and looks as if it will settle under the $75 million mark after all is said and done. Panic is starting to set in and while usually the response would be not to panic…let me be the first to tell you ... PANIC!

Writer/Director Bill Condon was in the audience at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway on December 20, 1981. His love for the incredible Michael Bennett Broadway production Dreamgirls shines through in every frame of his film adaptation, and the result is the best motion picture of 2006.

Ryan Fleck’s Half Nelson is building a head of steam going into awards season. Wednesday night at Chelsea Piers in New York City, it picked up 3 IFP Gotham Awards. This little film, made for about $1 million, was named Best Feature and also scored for Breakthrough Performance: Shareeka Epps and Breakthrough Director: Ryan Fleck. The 3 Gotham wins for this Thinkfilm release come on the heels of 5 Indepenednt Spirit Award nominations announced on Tuesday in LA.

When Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden chatted with distributors at Sundance, they were confused. “All the acquisition people were saying Half Nelson was their favorite movie at the festival,” explains Fleck, “but they also said they had no idea how to sell it.”

By “sell it”, those acquisition executives were talking about two problems. There’s the question of how you market a subtle film about a crack-addicted teacher who strikes up a unique relationship with a student who discovers his drug use. But, this is also challenging material for a specialty distributor to justify to its powerful parent company. After all, Miramax answers to Disney, Paramount Classics answers to Paramount, and so on.

On a winter’s night in Park City in January, the husband-wife directing team of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris found themselves at the center of the show business universe. Their first feature film, Little Miss Sunshine, had its world premiere at Sundance, and for the next 11 1/2 hours, a furious bidding war raged. The winner was Fox Searchlight with among the biggest sales in Sundance history – just over $10 million.

Half Nelson (Thinkfilm) and Little Miss Sunshine (Fox Searchlight) have scored five Independent Spirit Award nominations apiece. Half Nelson, about an unlikely friendship between an idealistic, but drug-addicted teacher and one of his young black students, earned nods for Best Feature, Best Director ( Ryan Fleck), Best Male Lead (Ryan Gosling), Best Female Lead (Shareeka Epps) and Best First Screenplay (Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden). The runaway indie hit Little Miss Sunshine earned nods for Best Feature, Best Director (Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris), Best First Screenplay (Michael Arndt) and Best Supporting Male (Alan Arkin). Other Best Feature nominees are Pan's Labrynth (Picturehouse), The Dead Girl (First Look) and American Gun (IFC Films). Also, the late Robert Altman earned a Best Director nom for A Prairie Home Companion (Picturehouse).

To steal a line from the movie Speed, "Pop quiz, hotshot." What film opened last weekend to a per theater average of over $15,000?  No, the answer is not Happy Feet or Casino Royale.  Those two films both opened Nov. 17.  They also opened to per theater averages of about $11,000 and $12,000 respectively.  I'll give you another hint -- this film didn't even open in the Top 10.  Or the Top 15.

A week has gone by and the turkey comas have finally subsided. So that means it’s time to check in on the FantasyMoguls.com Celeb League. Of course, that whole turkey coma thing only applies to us civilian slobs. Those celebs, well, they have to watch their figures and all. Boy, those fancy, skinny celebs, they sure do make us sick. Anyhow, we digress.

Ho-Hum. Staying very strong atop the box office this week are Happy Feet and Casino Royale. Finishing 1-2 for the second weekend in a row, both films show little erosion from their opening numbers for the three-day weekend -- especially when you figure in the elevated Wednesday-Thursday-Friday figures because of the Thanksgiving Holiday. Happy Feet has proven to be THE family film to own in the regular Moguls game having just about reached the $100 million plateau after just 10 days in release. 

The History Boys, Deja Vu, The Fountain and Bobby each deal with history. I'll tell you where two of the four go wrong.