Earlier this week, our own Katey Rich wrote an article titled "How Inception Can Save Hollywood Blockbusters, But Only If You Pay To See It." In five points she lays out why it is so very important for audiences to choose Christopher Nolan's newest film over the other options at the box office. Apparently a lot of you are listening.

Deadline is reporting that Inception has done some major business in its first day of release, pulling in $3 million from midnight screenings alone and somewhere between $18 and $20 million. Estimates are saying that the film should do somewhere between the low $40 and high $60 million range by the end of the weekend.

This is phenomenal news. Going into today, nobody knew how this film would perform. On the one hand, it's the director's follow-up to The Dark Knight, the third most successful film in history. On the other, the film's highly cerebral storyline made it nearly impossible to market. But the film worked and it did it marvelously. Warner Bros. gave Nolan $200 million to make any movie he wanted. What resulted is a film that will likely be on a great number of Top Ten of 2010 lists come December. Studios take note: you don't have to just feed us mindless pablum anymore. We can handle the good stuff too.