All this summer’s box office needed for burial was a shovel, and Hollywood provided that with a Labor Day line-up devoid of any genuinely wide new releases.  The result is going to be ugly, except for a few hardy holdovers. The widest release of the weekend isn’t new at all:  it’s the one-week 901-theatre […]

  As the 2018 box office enters the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, most of its strength still lies in 2017 releases.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (Columbia/Sony) is on track to win its 4th weekend of release.  Friday’s $6M take was down 44% from last week, and with […]

  OPENINGS:  Word of mouth kicked in on Saturday for CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR (Marvel/Disney), which fell a mild 19% from opening day, much better than the 38% drop for Batman v Superman and the 33% for The Avengers: Age Of Ultron (although not quite as good as the 10% for Iron Man 3, 14% for The Avengers […]

  WONDER WOMAN (RatPac/Wanda/Ten Cent/DC/Warners) is proving to be exactly what its studio–and the summer box office in general–needed.  For Warners, it’s giving the embattled DC mega-franchise its first taste of critical praise since the days of The Dark Knight, which is important in itself, and that’s paying off in ticket sales.  Preliminary numbers at […]

  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.  […]

  The underperforming spectacle of the week is INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE (20th), which found out that not all that many people cared to see a sequel to a two-decade old hit without its original star.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, opening day was $17.5M (including $4M from Thursday evening), 33% below the already not-great […]

  Franchises have been dropping like flies this year, but one brand name that still works is Marvel.  Its latest extravaganza DOCTOR STRANGE (Marvel/Disney) had an opening day of at least $32M according to preliminary numbers at Deadline (including $9.4M from Thursday night), which should give it a $80M+ weekend.  As the kick-off to a […]

  After AVENGERS: ENDGAME (Marvel/Disney) torched the record books last weekend, the remaining question was whether it would have the stamina to challenge the biggest records of them all, The Force Awakens in the US ($936.7M) and Avatar worldwide ($2.79B).  It’s not clear after Friday whether this weekend will answer that in a definitive way.  […]