20th Century Fox's "Night at the Museum" cleaned up over the four-day Christmas holiday weekend, raking in a whopping $42.2 million from Friday to Monday.

The headlines though are all focused on another record breaker - "Dreamgirls". After its very limited roadshow debut two weeks ago, the movie expanded onto 852 screens where it pulled in an astonishing $8.7 million on its first day.

The figure puts it as the third highest Christmas Day opening behind 2001's "Ali" ($10.2 million) and 2002's "Catch Me If You Can" ($9.8 million) but the key thing here is that those films opened on three and four times as many screens as "Dreamgirls" did respectively.

Comparing their per theatre averages it plays out as "Dreamgirls" ($10,242), "Ali" ($4,177) and "Catch Me If You Can ($3,137).

Also scoring well on the limited front were Clint Eastwood drama "Letters from Iwo Jima" with a $24,520 per theatre average for the four days, Peter O'Toole comedy "Venus" with a $16,290 screen average, Asian flick "Curse of the Golden Flower" with a $11,883 average, and "Children of Men" with a $11,250 average.

Back in the big leagues "Rocky Balboa" continued its strong mid-week debut with a $17 million haul, whilst Matt Damon CIA drama "The Good Shepherd" also fared alright with $14.2 million. The notable dud of the period was football drama "We Are Marshall" with a mere $8.6 million.

"The Pursuit of Happyness", "The Holiday" and "Charlotte's Web" all had only small drops in their takes whilst "Eragon" had the biggest fall of the list (-60%). "Eragon" may be bombing domestically but is holding its own overseas with around double its U.S. haul in international receipts so far.