Box office prognosticators have been thrown several major curveballs already this summer, what with the record-setting gross of X-Men: The Last Stand, the larger-than-expected $38 million opening weekend haul of the deceptively marketed but hearteningly substantive The Break-Up and the lower-than-hoped-for gross of Mission: Impossible III. The latest surprise: 20th Century Fox’s The Omen, a film made to custom-fit the apocalyptic release date of June 6, 2006.

Bowing yesterday, the film generally wasn’t expected to do more than $7-8 million or so (though wouldn’t a $6.66 million gross been absolutely awesome?). Instead, early reports peg the remake of Richard Donner’s 1976 chiller as having raked in a whopping $12.5 million single-day take — a possible record for Tuesday, pending final data. Lukewarm critical reception appears not to have yet substantially hurt the film, directed by John Moore and starring Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles, but a more telling indicator of its commercial legs will come this weekend.

While Disney’s latest release from Pixar, Cars, will undeniably own the box office’s top spot, other releases — like filmmaker Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion, William Hurt's The King and an expansion of Al Gore’s global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth — don’t provide much mainstream adult competition. If The Omen's grosses remain high and the movie places a strong second, the public’s seeming fascination with wan, religious-themed menace and thrills could help embolden a new tide of flicks about evil incarnate. After all, at least one is already in the can: Universal’s similarly themed Whisper, starring Lost's Josh Holloway, is slated for release in early 2007, presumably sans gimmickry.