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Between them, Universal and Amblin's JP III and Revolution Studios and Columbia's Sweethearts grossed an extra sweet $81 million-plus. Distribution sources said Sunday morning that it set a record as the biggest combined total ever for two openings. They added, however, that combined total for Pearl Harbor's opening weekend and Shrek's second weekend for the three day weekend portion of this year's four day Memorial Day holiday period was an even larger $101.6 million.

Driven by the twin blockbuster openings, ticket sales reversed their recent downward pattern versus last year. Key films grossed nearly $140 million, up over 5 percent from this time a year ago.

The PG-13 rated action adventure fantasy sequel JP III kicked off to a sizzling ESTIMATED $50.27 million at 3,434 theaters ($14,640 per theater). Its cume after five days is approximately $80.9 million.

JP III is Universal's third high profile box office success story this summer. The studio began the summer season in early May with The Mummy Returns, which has grossed nearly $201 million after 12 weeks in theaters. The studio's mid-summer sleeper hit The Fast and the Furious has now grossed $125 million after five weeks in theaters.

Directed by Joe Johnston, JP III stars Sam Neill, William H Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan, Michael Jeter, John Diehl and Bruce A. Young.

JP III's average per theater was the highest for any film playing in wide release this weekend.

"It's extraordinary," Universal distribution president Nikki Rocco said Sunday morning. "Coming off of the Wednesday opening (of $19 million), everybody was surprised. Now that the weekend results are almost in, I think everybody continues to be surprised.

"It would have been a normal expectation for the picture to be flat between Friday and Saturday, but once again there's no way of reading this business. We did a lot of business and were up 24 percent on Saturday night. It's playing very broad, is what it means. All of my people that went to check theaters yesterday -- which we do when we have films like this in the marketplace to make sure we're in the right screens -- at one o'clock in the afternoon the big screens were (already) three-quarters filled in the megaplexes and with families."

Rocco also pointed to anecdotal evidence that JP III is already generating repeat business. "We had a theater manager that got some complaints from parents," she explained. "But you'll never guess what the complaints were -- the kids behind them kept on saying what the next scene was going to be because they'd seen it already!"

With nearly $81 million already in hand, where does it go? While it's clearly going to be huge, it's too early now to say how huge. "No one knows," Rocco observed.