'Paul Blart: Mall Cop' was underestimated

Audience tracking surveys are hardly perfect, but rarely are they as far off the mark as when "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" arrived in theaters three weeks ago. Having studied the various appraisals of moviegoer interest, executives at Sony Pictures concluded that, at worst, "Mall Cop" would gross $20 million in its first four days, with a high end of perhaps $25 million in domestic theaters.

The actual Martin Luther King Day weekend returns: $39.2 million.

Since its Jan. 16 release, "Mall Cop" has been a box-office sensation, winning not only that opening weekend by a wide margin but also remaining the nation's No. 1 film last weekend, when it slipped just 32% (most movies fall about 50% in their second week of release) to gross $21.6 million, sneaking past Sony's new Screen Gems genre film, "Underworld 3: Rise of the Lycans."

With more than $67 million in ticket sales so far, "Mall Cop" is well-poised to go beyond $100 million in domestic theaters. It's a highly unexpected outcome for what was once a lowly regarded comedy with an untested lead actor ("King of Queens" TV star Kevin James) in the titular role.

The film's success says less about the fallibility of tracking surveys than it does about audience demand for feel-good stories and Hollywood's growing appetite for low-budget comedies with obvious marketing hooks. While 2008 movie admissions were off about 5% from the previous year, this year's box-office sales figures -- thanks largely to "Mall Cop," "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Gran Torino" -- are running almost 15% ahead of last year's pace.

"You've got a country that is willing to put their economic worries behind them and go to the movies," says Doug Belgrad, the Sony production executive who developed the movie with James based on the actor's own idea.

"And people see themselves in this guy," Belgrad says of James' ne'er-do-well shopping mall security guard, who foils a band of thieves who invade the mall he patrols on his Segway. "They love it when a guy who isn't given credit for being good at anything succeeds."

James pitched actor-producer Adam Sandler, his costar in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry," and Sony his idea for the movie in the summer of 2007. The idea wasn't fully formed, but the movie could easily be parsed into comprehensible Hollywood shorthand: "Die Hard" meets "Home Alone" with an overweight security guard.