Variety‘s Michael Sullivan is reporting that the $3.5 million earned yesterday by Cloud Atlas “must be something of a disappointment for the bow of a film that cost more than $100 million to produce.” Yeah, that’s one way to put it, especially when you add on marketing and p & a.

If things go well Atlas will probably end up tripling its $10 million first weekend gross for a total of $30 million. Then again many bright and passionate people are in love with this extremely difficult-to-get-through film so it all balances out in the end.

Ben Affleck‘s Argo was in first place yesterday with $4 million, and is expected to bring in about $13 million by Sunday night. That’s a mere 22% drop from last weekend, and that weekend had dropped only 15.5% from the opener. The word-of-mouth is obviously quite strong.