After a snow-delayed start, the holiday weekend turned into a Christmastime extravaganza at the Grand Cinema.

“We had our biggest weekend of the year,” said Philip Cowan, executive director of Tacoma’s three-screen art house. From Friday through Sunday, the theater sold $16,729 worth of tickets, edging out 2008's previous best, the weekend of Jan. 18-20, when patrons ponied up $16,510 to see “Atonement,” “There Will Be Blood” and “Juno.”

This year it was “Doubt,” “Milk” and “Slumdog Millionaire” that kept the cash register humming. “Doubt,” which stars Meryl Streep as a stern nun who suspects that the parish priest played by Philip Seymour Hoffman is a pedophile, was by far the theater’s most popular picture, taking in $6,862 at the box office, Cowan said. “Milk” landed in second place with $5,037 in ticket sales and “Slumdog” brought up the rear with $4,830, Cowan said. The latter two titles have already been playing for several weeks.

The performance of all three movies is so strong that the theater will be sticking with that lineup this coming weekend. No new films will open on Friday.

For a while there, the opening of “Doubt” was in doubt as last week’s snowy weather delayed delivery of the print of the picture to the Grand by a day. It had been booked to open on Christmas Day, but the print didn’t appear until Friday, arriving by private courier just in time for the day’s first scheduled showing at 1:45 p.m., Cowan said.

As was the case with January’s big weekend, when “Atonement,” “Blood” and “Juno” were major contenders in the Oscar race, the three films playing there this week are widely predicted to be in the thick of next year’s Academy Awards shoot-out. In the Best Actress race, Cowan said, “I predict that Meryl Streep is going to win.” Of that he has no doubt.