"Incredibles" insights: Hollywood's boxoffice equivalent of Mother Nature's "perfect storm" comes when outstanding filmmaking and first-class marketing and distribution combine as they just have with Disney and Pixar's "The Incredibles."

With its 10-day cume over $143 million and its second weekend drop just 29 percent, "Incredibles" is heading for the same deep boxoffice waters as "Finding Nemo," which grossed $340 million domestically last year.

"Incredibles," a Walt Disney Pictures presentation of a Pixar Animation Studios film, is written and directed by Brad Bird. It was produced by John Walker and executive produced by John Lasseter. Among its voice talents are Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Samuel L. Jackson and Jason Lee.

After "Incredibles" lively launch to $70.5 million, insiders anticipated a strong second weekend, but nothing approaching the $50.3 million in ticket sales that made it the biggest second stanza in Buena Vista Pictures' history. Going into the weekend Hollywood handicappers were predicting a 35 percent drop that would have translated into around $46 million. Needless to say, that, too, would have qualified as enviable business, especially in a weekend crowded with four wide openings. In particular, "Incredibles" faced direct competition for family audiences from Warner Bros.' opening of its high profile mega-budget family adventure "The Polar Express," directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks.

For some insights about "Incredibles'" impact I turned to Buena Vista Pictures distribution president Chuck Viane and marketing president Oren Aviv. Asked why the picture worked so well, Aviv told me, "The smartest thing we did was to have a great movie! It's been a long time since we've had a movie that has had this kind of not only word of mouth, but genuine affection and rooting interest. We are extremely proud of the movie and, I'll tell you, from a marketing standpoint we couldn't have asked for a better movie -- a better movie in terms of playability, but also in terms of marketability. We had so many great pieces from the movie to work with that it made our jobs rather easy."

Nonetheless, orchestrating a success of this size had to have been an enormous job. "Well, living up to the expectation level of a movie this good is always difficult," Viane pointed out. "But I think creatively Oren painted the picture properly. It not only was extremely well reviewed, but (the marketing) made it come off as funny as it is."

"The other thing that I think is significant about this film and that really plays into the marketing of the film is that normally you might have one or two elements in a given film that you could put in the forefront of the marketing," Aviv explained. "Once you do that, there is not a great deal of opportunity to discover more things when you see the movie that surprise you. In the case of 'The Incredibles,' we not only had a handful of great things to put into the forefront of the marketing, but we also had so much left inside the movie to provide excitement and surprises -- (including) the look of the film, the technological marvel that is this movie. But, also, the lighting of the movie, the score of the film, the writing, the cleverness, the wittiness, the action sequences that rival most live action movies.

"Those are gifts in the marketing hall of fame that you hope for -- any one of those elements. But in the case of this film you have so many of these elements care of Pixar and Brad Bird, specifically, that it really made our jobs (much easier). The hardest part was living up to, number one, the expectations, as Chuck said, and number two, (living up to) what the movie really was. We all felt very good about the opening and, frankly, when we have a film like this we want to do whatever we can to live up to the film itself."

"There is a possibility that our filmmakers gave us one of the best pictures of the year (in terms of Academy consideration) and if that turns out to be the case, this picture will go on and on and on (at the boxoffice)," Viane said. "Obviously, the (release) date puts us in probably the most family friendly month of the year. November has always been exceptionally friendly to family movies. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, I can't tell you how big I think the holiday weekend's going to be for us. It's just (going to be) fabulous."

The direct competition for family audiences the film had and easily overcame last weekend from "Polar" made it a weekend to really test "Incredibles'" strength. "There's no question," Viane agreed. "They had a great movie. They did very well. But our strength is in this unbelievable word of mouth that we have going for it. On every corner somebody's talking about how, 'I saw this movie. I had such a great time. You've got to come see it with me.' It's not reactive word of mouth. It's people going out there and volunteering how good this movie is to their friends."

The challenge of marketing any movie is great and with a big movie it's all the more so. But in launching a film during the holiday season when the competition is so keen and when everyone is spending so much marketing money it has to be that much harder to achieve the level of success "Incredibles" has. "You're always dealing with the reality of the marketplace," Aviv said. "And you're always dealing with the reality of the competitive landscape. The holiday season is intensified. This November the competition is brutal. Every week it's not just one big movie coming in, it's a number of big movies coming in and a number of not-as-big movies coming in.

"So you really have to fight for every inch of turf. You have to get noticed. And then once you get noticed, you still have yet to convince people to go see your movie. So the challenges are more extreme and they're getting more so every year. We talk about it all the time. The competitive marketplace is getting more and more intense with every month that passes. There's not a weekend that anybody would consider a 'free weekend' any more."

"This year we have seen movies open at record levels constantly and then tumble by 40, 50 and sometimes 60 percent," Viane said. "So what you have in our movie with just this very minor 29 percent drop is something that separates it from all the rest. That is literally a tribute to the movie in terms of what it is and what it delivers."

One of the basic marketing tools these days with live action films is sending stars out on the television talk show circuit to promote their pictures. With animated characters, of course, there isn't the same opportunity, but that didn't stop Aviv and his marketing team from finding a way to achieve similar results. "In the case of 'Incredibles,' we had what we called a 'virtual junket' where we animated our lead characters as if they were being interviewed by real interviewers," Aviv told me. "So 'Access Hollywood,' for instance, had their on camera talent interviewing Mr. Incredible. You have to constantly top yourself and figure out new ways to get noticed on the publicity side because you don't have real characters or real actors who can go out and do stuff for you other than the voice talent."

Not too many years ago Hollywood would open its big Thanksgiving movies the day before Thanksgiving. Today, of course, high profile films like "Incredibles" arrive in the marketplace weeks before Thanksgiving and still wind up enjoying blockbuster ticket sales over the holiday. "The competitive nature of the business is such that there are so many movies, there's such an onslaught of product into the marketplace that you have to pick a time when you can separate yourselves," Viane pointed out. "And you can't all just (open) on that Wednesday before Thanksgiving as we used to do because somebody's there already. So you find a week and have faith in your movie to get you through the holidays, which is exactly where we are. We've done it with 'The Santa Clause' movies and 'Monsters, Inc.' and now this movie and we've been extremely successful (with this approach)."

In the past, though, distributors worried that if they opened their films early in November everyone would have seen the movie by the time Thanksgiving got here. That doesn't seem to be the case today. "You know, you also have an advantage if you go early," Aviv told me, "because there isn't a bad moviegoing weekend -- only movies that people don't want to see."

"That is so true," Viane agreed. "You know, I remember the days of 'Home Alone' (which 20th Century Fox opened to blockbuster business in mid-November 1990). This movie is like that (and) it's going to play itself right through the Christmas holidays -- not just the Thanksgiving holidays, but you're going to see us all over the screens of America at Christmas."

That was another concern distributors had years ago -- could a movie sustain itself in theaters during all those in-between weeks from Thanksgiving through Christmas? "Sometimes they can, sometimes they can't," Viane replied. "This one obviously has separated itself and it will definitely be there."

"Incredibles'" broad playability will clearly help it in getting through the long holiday season. A good sign of its wide appeal came opening weekend when Disney's exit research found that 38 percent of the audience was non-families, meaning teenagers or adults who came without bringing children. "Typically, you open a movie like this and your core audience, your anticipated audience, is that family unit and they come in extremely big numbers," Viane explained. "It takes a movie two or three weeks to catch up with the general public. We started from the advantage of having 38 percent of the audience non-families. (As a result the film became a topic of) conversation in offices where people said, 'You've got to go see this.' It's been extremely good for word of mouth."

Asked how Disney can keep "Incredibles" going on the marketing side in the post-Thanksgiving pre-Christmas period, Aviv replied, "Again, we get to start with a distinct advantage in not just great word of mouth from every corner, we even had better exit scores for our non-family audiences than we had for 'Finding Nemo.' So the word of mouth is one element that is the driver from here on in. But also the advantage you have when you have a movie that has this much money already banked is that (there are) scores of people going out and saying incredible things about 'Incredibles.' So that's going to drive it from here on in. We also continue to have our great promotion partners who remain on television supporting the film. And, of course, we will continue to support the film (with advertising), as well."

With many Hollywood insiders talking about "Incredibles" as a potential best picture Oscar contender, I asked Aviv what the impact of such a nomination would mean for the film. "Well, we, of course, think it's deserving of that honor and it would be a great honor, but it's certainly not something that we're counting on," he said. "It would be spectacular to have not just the boxoffice performance, but the kind of award accolades that mirror the terrific critical praise that's been heaped on the film. We would certainly be very, very happy about it, but it's not something that we are banking on."

This weekend, by the way, Disney stands to do quite a lot of boxoffice related banking since it's got a good shot at occupying the top two spots on the chart. "Incredibles" should continue to hold well in its third weekend, but could move down a notch to second place. That would open up first place for Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer Films' PG rated action adventure "National Treasure," which is expected to open very strongly at about 3,000 theaters. Produced by Bruckheimer and Jon Turteltaub, "Treasure" is directed by Turteltaub and stars Nicolas Cage.

Martin Grove is seen Mondays at 9:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., PT on CNN FN's "The Biz" and is heard weekdays at 1:20 p.m. and 1:55 p.m. on KNX 1070 AM in Los Angeles.