AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON (Marvel/Disney) blasted off with $27.6M from Thursday night screenings, handily beating the $18.7M for the first Avengers, although that blockbuster began its showings at midnight, while Ultron started its run at 7PM.  Ultron was also far above the $15.8M earned by Furious 7 in its Thursday night debut.  Sequels are […]

  THE REVENANT (Regency/20th) is showing impressive strength in its first day of wide release, after 2 strong weeks at NY/LA arthouses.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline give it $14M+ on Friday, putting it surprisingly into 1st place and confirming that Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the few “movie stars” these days who actually sells tickets.  […]

  Official studio estimates are in for New Year’s Weekend in the US, but overseas numbers are still sketchy.  A few notes: ROGUE ONE (Lucasfilm/Disney) had a US result in keeping with preliminary numbers, up 15% on Sunday and with an anticipated 12% Monday drop.  This puts it at $439.7M domestically, 41% below The Force […]

  MISS BALA (Columbia/Sony) is the only new opening this Super Bowl weekend, but it’s failing to take advantage of its status.  Deadline‘s preliminary numbers have Miss Bala‘s opening day at $2.7M ($650K of that from Thursday night), and with Sunday’s box office due to crash for everyone, it may not reach $7M for the […]

  Word of mouth on FANTASTIC FOUR (20th) is going to be deadly (the exit polls are dismal, and since they survey ticketbuyers enthusiastic enough to show up on the first day of release, lesser fans are likely to consider it even worse), probably sealing its fate as one of the biggest flops of the […]

  OPENINGS:  The Saturday bump for 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (Bad Robot/Paramount) was 8%, a solid number for its genre that indicates good word of mouth.  That gave it a $25.3M weekend, a bit higher than Friday indicated, although still not where it might have gotten had the Cloverfield connection (or relative lack thereof) been clearer.  […]

  Even bigger than Gaston after five dozen eggs, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (Disney) is coming in at the highest level of projections, and may be poised for the largest pre-May weekend in history.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have opening day at $65.3M (including $16.3M from Thursday night), and while that’s below the $81.6M first day […]

  Those waiting for Marvel to stumble will have to go on waiting.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, THOR: RAGNAROK (Marvel/Disney) had a $46M opening day (including $14.5M from Thursday night), the highest for any Marvel Universe title released outside the May-July corridor.  Opening day was up 44% from the start of Thor:  The […]