Thursday openings are hard to gauge, because there aren’t very many of them, and most of them are designed to extend long holiday weekends.  Here’s what we do know about the $10.5M opening day for GI JOE: RETALIATION (Paramount/MGM).  That number includes $2.2M for Wednesday night and Thursday midnight screenings, and without those, it’s […]

  It’s not much of a surprise at this point that GRAVITY (Warners) continues to run rings around its competition.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, the blockbuster will easily win its third consecutive weekend, with $8.8M on Friday, down only 30% from last Friday.  That should mean a $30M weekend, and close to $170M […]

  MALEFICENT (Disney) performed as well as its Thursday night start suggested it might, at the high-end of expectations according to preliminary Friday numbers at Deadline and elsewhere.  The revisionist fairy tale surged to $24-25M on Friday (that includes the $4.1M from Thursday night), and should be headed for a weekend well north of $70M, […]

  Hollywood doesn’t typically open strong titles on Oscar weekend, when moviegoing is likely to fall sharply on Sunday.  So although the superfans and curiosity-seekers have already had their fill, and 50 SHADES OF GREY (Universal/Focus) wasted no time in diving from last week’s remarkable heights, the kinky romance is having no trouble with this […]

  This weekend is looking like a battle of the family films, with no clear victor at this point.  THE BOSS BABY (DreamWorks Animation/20th) is performing quite a bit better than expected, with preliminary numbers at Deadline giving it nearly $15M on Friday (including $1.5M from Thursday night), which should lead it to a $50M […]

  The only new opening on Black Friday was a limited release, but everything already in the market took the customary post-holiday leap.  COCO (Pixar/Disney) will easily win the 3-day weekend, after $19.1M on Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  Coco continues to be on pace with Tangled ($19.5M on Black Friday), and it […]

  The lack of strong new competition is certainly helping, as is the Wednesday opening that kept last Friday down a bit, but nevertheless, the Weekend 2 hold for CRAZY RICH ASIANS (SK Global/Warners) is on track to be extraordinary.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have a 4% Friday-to-Friday drop to $7M, which would give it […]

  ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD (Columbia/Sony), the summer’s great adult-oriented, non-franchise, auteur/movie star hope, had a solid start per preliminary numbers at Deadline with a $16.7M opening day (including $5.8M from Thursday night).  That’s the biggest opening of Quentin Tarantino’s career, higher than the $14.4M for Inglourious Basterds and the $15M for Django […]