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Juno finally went wide on Tuesday, December 25th. On the weekend of December 28th - 30th (its fourth weekend of release) it was playing at 1,019 theatres and earned $10.6 million, placing it at #5. The next weekend Fox Searchlight pushed the film in over 1,900 venues in an effort to get it to #1. It earned $15.8 million (its highest weekend take during its release) and charted at #2 (it was kept off the top by National Treasure: Book of Secrets). Going into 2008 and from January 7th to 10th it was actually the top performer at the daily box office.

Speaking to Market Watch, Fox Searchlight President Stephen Gilula explained that they had planned a calculated release to have the film slowly expanding, only they ended up having to book more theaters than they expected. They did not intend to have the film playing on more than 2,000 screens, yet demand meant that by its sixth week they added an additional 500 screens, which brought the screen count to over 2,400. “The film has taken hold in a vast number of small markets in the Midwest,” said Gilula said of Juno’s performance. “Theater owners are seeing the demographic group that attends screenings continue to widen.”

In its eighth week the Oscar nominations were announced, with Juno receiving four nominations - Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay. In the same week it became Fox Searchlight’s first film to cross the $100 million mark at the US box office.

Juno played for 28 weeks (it was still playing in a handful of theaters even after it was released on DVD) and earned $143.4 million at the US box office. It earned an additional $87.9 million overseas, with $10 million from Australia and $19 million from the UK (in both countries Fox also distributed the film and opened it wide against blockbusters such as National Treasure: Book of Shadows and Cloverfield).

Juno had managed to earn $231 million worldwide. So why did everyone flock to see a bulging Ellen Page?

Teenage pregnancy is a subject that would often be handled in complete seriousness, focusing on the pain, sorrow and possible repercussions of what that teenager is dealing with. While there are elements of this in Juno, the film is essentially classified as a comedy. Doing so makes it more appealing to the masses. Otherwise your film simply ends up being a low budget serious depress-fest that will win critical praise, but isn’t exactly mainstream friendly, with few people ever hearing about it (e.g. A Way of Life). However, Juno is actually very funny. Even the marketing made sure to focus on the funny, with the trailer describing the film as, “a comedy about life,” which sounds utterly vague, but the key word that Fox Searchlight wanted to get across here was “comedy”.

Adding humour to a serious subject is a risk that doesn’t always work, yet with Juno its strength lies in Cody’s writing, particularly of the title character herself, and Page’s performance. Cody and Reitman also highlight the uniqueness of the character in the film itself. Juno’s father mentions how she has “a wonderful sense of humour, just one of her many genetic gifts,” while Bleeker’s mother describes Juno as “different.”

Reviews were overly positive, with many critics praising Cody’s script, using words like smart, witty, real and quirky. Some noted the dialogue of the teenage characters, in that while it sounded like teenagers, apparently no teenager would speak this way. Cody justified this during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying, “God knows people might say the dialogue in Juno is too stylized, but I've met so many hyperarticulate teenage girls who are not just shallow and image-obsessed.”

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