I was walking up to the Arlington last night to catch the Virtuosos Tribute when I noticed a long line outside the Fiesta Five. “Is this for Chronicle?” I asked a woman near the end of it. “It’s a general line for everything,” she said. I asked what she was seeing. “The Woman in Black.” Something was obviously up. It was a cool Friday night and a certain hunger among a younger, less cultured Santa Barbara crowd (i.e., SBIFF-averse for whatever reason) had made itself known.

Chronicle and Woman in Black were neck-and-neck, as it turned out. At 10 pm last night Deadline had The Woman in Black earning $8.8 million in 2,855 theaters for a $3082 average, and Chronicle with $8.6 million in 2907 situations for a per-screen average of $2958.

I’m out of this personally. I missed last Tuesday night’s Chronicle screening at the Fox lot when I was down in LA and nobody invited me to a Woman in Black screening so I don’t know anything.