Sherlock Holmes box office smash

The box office juggernaut that was "Avatar was beat out by the Christmas Day opening of the Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes." The movie grossed $24.9 million on the 25th, beating out "Avatar's"  $23.5 million Friday release. Though according Reuters, Fox said "Avatar" has grossed over $160 million total.

Guy Ritchie, famous for marrying Madonna and creating the movies "Snatch" and "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," directed the film with Robert Downy Jr. in the lead role of the 19th century detective. In the movie, Holmes and Watson (Jude Law) must figure out why the recently deceased Lord Blackwood is still killing English citizens, and save London in the process.

What some might not know is that Sherlock Holmes, a fictional character created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the late 1800s, influenced real-life detectives in his empirical methods of crime detection. E. J. Wagner won the 2007 Edgar Award for Mystery writing for her book, "The Science of Sherlock Holmes."  In it, she shows how the fictional accounts of Holmes influenced the then superstitious police forces in 19th century America and England into using scientific and forensic methods to determine particulars of criminal activity, and, therefore, who did the deed.