The Reader and Milk didn't get very far at all in their first weekends of wide(-ish) release, despite the latter film's particular efforts to separate itself from the Slumdog/Frost/Nixon pack that got a head start a week earlier. Focus pulled in $1.414 million on 882 screens — actually $39,000 less than last November's opening-weekend gross on 36 screens. The $1,603 per-screen average was still enough to knock Frost/Nixon off, but not enough to surpass The Reader, itself a disappointment with barely $2.3 million on 1,000 screens.

And of course all of them succumbed once again to the muscularly rabid breed that is Slumdog — as noted, a $7.6 million-grossing, crap-covered Oscar darling if ever we saw one. Sean Penn and Kate Winslet remain safely in the lead on their own tracks, meanwhile, redeeming at least some of Focus's and the Weinsteins' strategies. Thank God the acting branch remains lousy at math.

• Weekend Box Office, Jan 30 - Feb. 1 [Box Office Mojo]

As noted last night by Anne Thompson, Focus waited to enter Milk in the wide-release scrum where Slumdog Millionaire and Frost/Nixon battled last week. The strategy accomplished more than just simple separation; it allowed the distributor to pocket the money it would have dumped on garden-variety awards-season ads and spend more aggressively tomorrow, calling attention to eight actual Oscar nods.

On one hand, it's not like Focus had much choice — Milk only had one Golden Globe nomination to pimp (a loss, at that). On the other, it's still a savvy economization of punches in the week when ballots were sent out, and in any case it has Thompson (and now us) surmising a scenario in which "Slumdog and its main rival, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, split the vote and Milk takes the best picture win."

It's not out of the question; if anyone knows about peaking too soon, it's Focus, still stinging along with the rest of us three years after Brokeback Mountain. We don't know when or even if Button will peak at all, but Slumdog is having a miserable time holding on to "darling" status while press on three continents chatter on about Child-ExploitationGate. We'll leave the sociocultural debate to the experts, but we were way in front of the raging Oscar-cultural debate as to which Slumdog nemesis might have pushed the story to coincide with the ballot-mailing. And don't look at Harvey, folks; he's just happy to be here.

• Oscar Watch: Is Milk Coming Up on the Outside? [Thompson on Hollywood]

The contretemps started yesterday morning when THR reporter Steven Zeitchik — who mostly sounded ticked off he wasn't invited to the first press screening — wrote about "the Milk marketing conundrum," suggesting that Focus had "eschewed publicity" while pushing director Gus Van Sant and star Sean Penn's biopic about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the country, who was assassinated in 1978. The main point of comparison was Focus's Brokeback Mountain, which THR noted was a lightning rod for conservatives months before it was released in 2005.

Citing no festival appearances, limited press exposure and, bafflingly, a Las Vegas test screening in which two senior citizens reportedly sought to leave during a love scene between Penn and co-star James Franco, THR's big picture showcased a movie that Focus depoliticized on purpose, lest the early backlash hinder its box-office and awards chances. "With all the politicking going on (not just the election but, here in California, with Proposition 8, a subject that mirrors eerily one of Harvey Milk's battles)," Zeitchik wrote in a blog follow-up, "the company was eager to avoid talk-radio defining the movie for it."

Not a terrible theory, we guess — except it was wrong, Schamus (right) wrote in a letter sent THR's way last night:

That's a pretty serious charge, especially made by a reporter who did not call us to get his facts, so to speak, straight.

First of all, to the charge of "hiding" the film (for which, given its post-production schedule, we have only had finished prints at hand for a couple of weeks - a fact conveniently missed by your reporter), I can only say that I happen to be writing this while on my way to the airport for a flight to San Francisco, where we shall world-premiere the film tonight at the Castro Theatre, across the street from the storefront where Harvey began his political career. [...] The after-screening gathering will be held at San Francisco's City Hall, and today has been proclaimed "Focus Features Day" by the Mayor – who clearly didn't get The Hollywood Reporter in time to understand our underhanded, apolitical approach to marketing the film. [...]

Following the debut of that trailer way back on September 12, our marketing campaign mobilized an early online media push timed to all four presidential race debates –- the mornings after, we had specially commissioned Milk ad buys on the political pages of the websites of The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post, and many more. [...] I expect that more thorough journalism on our Milk campaign will be published in THR soon.

By the time Schamus had dashed off his signature, though, the damage was done. The new-and-improved Radar had distilled the story (without attribution) to "Milk will seem a bit too politcal and preachy," while our cousins at Gawker surmised that "Milk just isn't very good. [...] [W]hen a studio declares it must be very, very quiet in promoting a film, it pushes us toward another conclusion: Milk is going to be so bad Sean Penn won't have a chance at Oscar time no matter how many full page ads Focus runs."

Classy, guys. Of course, Focus didn't declare that, and the author hadn't viewed Milk either. David Poland did last night, however, filing afterward that it's "a brilliant, powerfully humane piece of work that reaches well beyond the issue of gay rights or any idea that this is a gay-only film." We don't necessarily think all of America might see it that way, but we'd expect professionals with access to have the good sense not to make it worse. Alas. Next time, THR!

• Schamus defends 'Milk' plan [eugonline]

• The 'Milk' Marketing Conundrum [THR]

To be fair, the film goes wider later this week, and Focus always has the UK release this fall and whatever slight cult audience accrues for video. So it could be worse — now imagine you're Rainn Wilson.

As we anticipated last Friday, TV viewers' Wilson goodwill isn't exactly multiplex-ready. The Rocker's marketing misfires, non-existent word-of-mouth and release-date follies yielded a $2.8 million, 12th-place opening. We're not in the short-sighted camp that thinks Fox is having the Summer From Hell — not with The Happening and What Happens in Vegas finding very respectable profits overseas — but there really is no positive way to spin this one, at least not for his toplining future. Until further notice, Wilson is Dwight Schrute and the clever bit-parter who has a way with pregnancy-test pitches and other Oscar-winning patois — maybe not in that order, but at least in that zone. Maybe a few scenes in Inglorious Bastards? Our Mondays are too fragile as it is to go through this again.

• Weeken Box Office Results [Box Office Mojo]

• Demetri Martin heads to 'Woodstock' [Variety.com]

It seems that the director, who has wanted either both or neither of the films to play the fest, won't be able to finish the four-hour-plus opus by deadline. Evidently, Soderbergh has essentially finished the second film but, despite non-stop work in recent weeks, hasn't quite gotten the first half of the Benicio Del Toro starrer where he wants it.

Hunting for silver linings in our cloudy dismay, we find consolation only in the fact that Del Toro can continue production of The Wolf Man uninterrupted, thus leaving on the cumbersome make-up his character requires straight through the end of shooting next month. We'll always have Indiana Jones 4, we suppose. Sigh.

• Few U.S. pics set for Cannes festival [Variety]

· Focus Features is in a great mood, everyone! [THR]
· Always at the cutting edge of internet marketing content, Showtime has set up a hybrid video player/chat room for serial killer drama Dexter, allowing fans to learn cutting-edge knifing techniques visually as they swap mass-murder tips. [THR]