The current competition between Kong and Narnia could play out in any number of scenarios. Personally I’m hoping for full-on, bare-knuckled street brawling, followed by some late-night drinking and wallowing in self-pity, with it all coming to head in some earth-shattering make-up sex.

I think the wild card in the whole matter rests on two aspects. Firstly, how long will movie-watchers keep the two blockbusters in theaters? As we’ve seen, year after year, the Christmas season tends to leave leftovers throughout January and February but, increasingly, moviegoers seem to have shorter and shorter attention spans, in which case the first quarter of 2006 could make for a dreary one.

This leads to the second factor: with the constant decrease in the box office and ever-growing sales on the DVD side, how quickly will the respective studios let the films drop out of sight so they can rebuild excitement for the video release?

I guess this is as close as us cinephiles are going to get to an Ali versus Frazier for awhile, so here’s to the the battle raging on!

Another interesting thought on the Narnia vs. Kong duel: How nice must it be to be WETA right now? They’ve been top-dog of FX companies since that whole Rings business went down, but now they hold ownership over both box office bombshells, which I guess makes the “make-up sex” comment seem a bit incestuous…