It doesn’t happen often, but the “final” weekend box office figures released this afternoon by Exhibitor Relations have “Juno” moving into the No. 2 spot, ahead of yesterday’s No. 2, “I Am Legend” — $15,860,744 vs. $15,717,458 in a real squeaker. The “final” numbers are also an estimate based on a sample, but a more accurate one than the Sunday “estimates,” which use historical mathematical formulas to calculate the Sunday grosses based on the Friday and Saturday estimates. Exhibitor Relations’ Jeff Bock predicts in his weekly newsletter that the “Juno” grosses will ultimately pass $100 million in the U.S., making it the top grosser in the history of Fox Searchlight. Compare it to Searchlight’s three Best Picture Oscar nominees: “Sideways” ($71.5 million), “Little Miss Sunshine” ($59.8 million) and “The Full Monty” ($45.9 million), not to mention “Napoleon Dynamite” ($44.5 million). Not a bad position to be in five days before Oscar nomination ballots close. Jeff thinks “Juno” has a best pic nom sewed up; so do I.

