I hate it when Nikke Finke is right about something. On Sunday, she wrote that the new George Clooney movie, Leatherheads, had come in third in the week’s box-office rankings. She wrote:

Leatherheads […] stumbled badly at the box office this weekend, making only $12.5 million from 1,769 theaters and finishing only No. 3. (Interestingly, the pic’s studio, Universal, claimed it was No. 2, but every other Hollywood major had it as No. 3 behind Sony’s 21 and Fox/Walden’s Nim’s Island.)

The inimitable bold-italic emphasis is Finke’s. The box-office figures reported yesterday, however, had Leatherheads at number two. But now Variety writes:

Final figures released Monday showed “Island” nearly matching its Sunday estimate with $13.2 million while the Universal pic’s number slid 6% to $12.7 million. And U’s estimate for Sunday’s total missed by about 28%.

Rival studios had indicated on Sunday that they believed Universal’s estimate for its period comedy was overly optimistic. But a U rep said the Sunday estimate was based on comparisons of performances by similar pics.

The “Leatherheads” performance came in well under pre-weekend forecasts, which had it coming in first.

Revisions like that aren’t entirely rare; less uncommon, however, is a little studio numbers manipulation when a big star’s personal project is on the line.