1. Atlas Shrugged Part 1 Movie opened in 300 theaters nationwide and took in an estimated $1.7 million in its first weekend–14th highest grossing movie this weekend. It made $5,600 per screen, higher than all movies playing except the top 2 movies. The other number I was watching closely was its performance on Saturday compared to Friday–because I knew that the bulk of Objectivists were seeing it on Friday. It performed almost as strongly on Saturday as it did on Friday–which is a good sign.

2. The movie and associated publicity enabled Atlas Shrugged to rocket up Amazon’s Bestseller list this week from outside Top 100 all the to #4! It has held the #4 spot for the last 24 hours. This is my favorite development of all. Now the big question is how long it remains on Amazon’s Top 100 bestseller list and at how high a level. As of a week ago it had been in the Top 100 for around 260 days. I am predicting that thanks to the the Movies Part 1, 2 & 3, Atlas Shrugged will be a permanent fixture on Amazon’s Bestseller list for at least the next two and a half years. I urge Penguin, the Estate of Ayn Rand and ARI to dramatically step up publicity for the book–at no time will a dollar spent on publicizing the book will bring more dollars back as the next two and half years.

3. How was the movie received by Objectivists? I conducted a poll of my Facebook friends asking them to rate the movie as wither Excellent (5 stars), Good (4 stars), Average (3 stars), Poor (2 stars) or Awful (1 star). With 64 votes so far, ranging the entire spectrum, the average is 3.5 stars. You can see the poll results onmy Facebook wall here. If you have trouble viewing the poll results or voting in the poll because you are not my Facebook friend, you are welcome to send me a Facebook friend request. You will also be able to see my frequent updates about Atlas Shrugged Movie as they are posted on Facebook. Please add you own vote in the poll

4. The next critical questions for the movie is whether its good performance in its first week enables the movie publicists to convince more theaters to show it next weekend, and how much money it can take in the next weekend, which will demonstrate the movie’s wider appeal.