It's far too early to write any obituaries for Universal Pictures' "King Kong." As of Tuesday, the end of its first two weeks in release, Peter Jackson's remake had amassed $128 million domestically and $153.6 million abroad, for a combined worldwide haul of $282.1 million. With those numbers, it's just about halfway home to recouping its $207 million production costs, give or take the added millions spent on marketing as well as the participations earmarked for Jackson.

Still, the fact that "Kong" didn't automatically prevail as king of the jungle -- but instead has found itself in a day-to-day battle with "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe" -- has created its own suspense.

One of the problems for "Kong" is that the much of the media covers the boxoffice battles with all the subtlety of color commentators at a demolition derby.

At one holiday gathering this past week, when the conversations turned to movies, one friend mentioned that her sister said she wouldn't be going to see "Kong." When he asked her why, her woman replied, "Because I read on Drudge that it was bombing."

In fact, the always hyperventilating Drudge Report first responded to the early, ecstatic reviews of "Kong" by reporting unrealistic expectations that it could challenge "Titanic" as the biggest film of all time -- a feat that no movie has come anywhere close to since "Titanic" set sail in 1997. Then, on Dec. 16, Drudge headlined the first reports of "Kong's" less-than-record-breaking first day with the ominous words " 'King' Bomb?"

Now, if there's someone out there saying she doesn't plan to check out "Kong" simply because Drudge was erroneously hinting it was dead-on-arrival, it's quite possible that person never seriously intended to see the movie in the first place.

But the anecdote also suggests that in this media-saturated moment, Hollywood doesn't just have to worry about genuine word-of-mouth coming from moviegoers who actually attend a movie before spreading the word -- good or bad -- it also has to defend against secondary word-of-mouth based on little more than a half-baked opinion or a snarky headline.

Webmaster Matt Drudge actually tried something similar this season as "Brokeback Mountain" rode onto the scene, trying to scare the horses, if you will, with the alarmist tone of one headline that read "Hollywood Rocked: Gay Cowboy Movie Becomes an Oscar Frontrunner." In the story itself, he ratcheted up rhetoric, describing the film as "arriving with nudity and explicit gay sex scenes" as if it were just one step short of a campfire orgy. To date, though, media attempts to turn "Brokeback" into a raging controversy haven't really taken hold -- the filmmakers, a dignified bunch, never rose to the bait, and the movie has been able to speak to itself.

That isn't the case for Steven Spielberg's "Munich," which has moved to the center of the media circus. "Now Israeli Spies Blast Spielberg's 'Munich,' " our man Drudge shouted Tuesday. The headline linked to a Reuters story in which a former Israeli field agent questions a scene in which a Mossad officer orders his operatives to keep track of their receipts.

Certainly, a movie like "Munich" invites serious debate. The only problem is that most Americans aren't knowledgeable about Israel's anti-terrorist operations. Every man on the street might have had an opinion about "JFK," because the Kennedy assassination is central to our history. But the "Munich" debate has rapidly devolved into the esoteric as the movie turns into a punching bag as all the self-appointed experts go at it.

It almost makes you feel some sympathy for the filmmakers, whose work is disappearing amid a foggy war of words.