After running the numbers on an adding machine, ripping off the unspooled receipt and declaring, "Holy crap—what a cash-incinerating bonfire!", however, the LAT concludes the nominations won't necessarily add up to profitability.

To begin with, we have the huge production budget, as reverse-aging Brad Pitt is an expensive affair. (Fincher quickly rejected a studio note suggesting that "maybe we could cut of a few tens-of-millions if we just have him wear a series of age-appropriate rubber novelty masks? Let me know what you think.") It therefore ended up costing them $150 million just to produce the film, five times the budget of the next most expensive Best Picture nominee. They spent another $135 million to market and distribute it worldwide, ensuring every bus stop from Beverly Hills to Bangladesh was covered in Pitt and Cate Blanchett's expressionless faces. Another $10 million was then spent just for the Oscar push.

And what has the movie taken in?

To date, "Button" has grossed $104 million at the U.S. box office and generated an additional $16.2 million in Australia and a handful of markets overseas. Warner Bros., which is releasing the film abroad, will roll out "Button" over the next few weeks in Germany, France, Spain, Britain, Japan and Italy.

A person familiar with "Button" said Paramount and Warner Bros. would break even when the movie grossed $300 million in worldwide ticket sales and went on to perform at projected levels when released in DVD and sold to TV.

By contrast, Slumdog Millionaire cost a puny $15 million to make, and its ten nominations will likely help it double its take of $45 million once it expands this weekend from 582 theaters to 1400.

Regardless of whether it hits that magic number, we doubt Button will signal the end of its kind, i.e. the bloated studio prestige pic with no franchise potential. For as long as there are executives who hope to litter their legacy with "meaningful" pictures, there will be greenlit, $200 million Oscar-grabs based on loglines like, "Two words: Will Smith in an updated Gentleman's Agreement, only with Muslims instead of Jews."

• 'Benjamin Button's' Oscar nominations may not pay off for Paramount [LAT]

(All figures come from Big Hollywood.)

1. Marley & Me - $13.9 million
Jennifer Aniston's Marley P.R. blitz—featuring dozens of discomforting conversations about yoga positions, half-Windsor knots, and sexual uses for pureed liver—appears to have done the trick. The film, a heart string-tugging story of how a disobedient pet made one family's life immeasurably richer, has logged the highest Christmas Day opening of all time—surely giving Fox reason enough to proceed with its planned sequel, 101 Marleys & Us.

2. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - $11.1 million
This meandering tale of man who was born smelling of VapoRub and egg salad sandwiches, and died smelling like powder and mashed bananas, is second-highest Xmas day opener of all time. It should be on track for a $45 million four-day weekend if its 2988 screens are expanded to the planned 3500, filling hundreds of abandoned ghost theaters once meant for the monkeysaur adventures of Delgo and friends.

3. Bedtime Stories - $9.75 million
Many expected this fantastical family film, featuring Adam Sandler as a loving uncle who discovers a remote control that can bring his wildest imaginings to life (wait—wrong omnipotent Sandler movie), to be the weekend's big earner. Still, expect Disney to act thrilled about its performance, with a statement gushing, "In a field crowded with major holiday releases, ours was the only film in the top five to feature both a gumball hailstorm, a chariot race, and Adam Sandler talking in that high-pitched baby voice that kills us every time. We couldn't be prouder."

4. Valkyrie - $7.35 million
Tom Cruise's latest starring vehicle seems to have indeed found an audience among history buffs, who craved a Führer-detonation thriller this Christmas. Estimates have the four-day take hitting as high as $30 million—a number robust enough to coax MGM employees off their Century City window ledges and onto New Year's Eve dance floors for champagne toasts to their favorite one-eyed, one-handed, Hitler-hunting superstar.

5. The Spirit - $3.15 million
You know your so-bad-it's-bad-unless-you're-tanked-and-then-it's-actually-pretty-good movie is underperforming when its star's snotty Kleenex is grossing higher than its per-screen average.

The Top Five Chinese Dishes Consumed Later by the Jews Who Saw Them:
1. Beef with Broccoli
2. Pork Fried Rice
3. Kung Pao Chicken
4. General Tsao's Chicken
5. Hot and Sour Soup

• Big Hollywood

We think this rejected key art featuring Taraji P. Henson and a nude, wrinkly baby Pitt more effectively sells the reverse aging tale—particularly had they paired it with a catchy tagline. Say, "One man's journey from Depends to Huggies."

• The Curious Case of the Better Benjamin Button Poster That Never Was [/film]

Which ultimately amounts to little more than succeeding without Steven Spielberg or Marvel's creative influence. But it will, as The NY Times reminds us, first depend on whether or not Grey can actually make people forget about Paramount Vantage less than a year after the label co-produced two Best Picture nominees before folding into the mother ship. How else to accomplish that, of course, but by courting both Oscar and audiences on the tenets of early 19th-century philosophy:

In a less expected twist, Paramount’s marketers have been building their campaign around a theme taken not from Fitzgerald but from the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. “We keep rearranging the words,” said Megan Colligan, co-president of domestic marketing for the studio. “But the idea is: You must live your life forward, but it can only be understood backward.”

Whatever, gang — we've already called our shot for Pitt. Just as long as you leave Deepak Chopra out of this one, you can't really go wrong.

• Paramount Steps Up to Contest for Oscars [NYT]