If you massage the stats enough, Hulu's an entertainment giant, hanging neck and neck with this year's most popular movies.  If you adopt a more objective perspective, however, it becomes pretty clear that the video-centric site hasn't exactly achieved blockbuster status.

In a report released this afternoon to NewTeeVee, Buzzpoint put Hulu just behind The Twilight Saga: New Moon, and ahead of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Up, and The Hangover in terms of revenue and opening weekend gross.  The catch is that Hulu's revenue for all of 2009 ($120 million) had to be counted to keep it in this group.

Similarly, Hulu topped Buzzpoint's list related to visitors and audience members at opening weekends.  By quite a lot, too - 42.5 million pairs of eyeballs focused on the free site, while runner-up New Moon attracted just 20.0 million watchers.

But the Hulu data covers the whole month of October, not a couple of days.  And it's hard to imagine that every Hulu visitor spent two or three hours completely focused on the site.

The Buzzpoint report concluded, "While Hulu's content strategy is obviously centered around television shows rather than movies, these comparisons to Hollywood nevertheless help illustrate the lengths Hulu needs to travel in order to become a true blockbuster."

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