There may be a pair of tight races at the box office this weekend.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, VENOM (Tencent/Columbia/Sony) has the early lead with $9.5M on Friday, down 71% from last week’s opening day.  That’s much worse than the 54% Friday-to-Friday drop for Doctor Strange and the 57% for Justice League, […]

> The Hollywood Reporter has some rough early numbers for Friday’s boxoffice, and the news looks good for CAPTAIN AMERICA:  THE FIRST AVENGER.  Including Thursday midnight grosses of $4M, it seems to be around $25M for the day.  This would be right in the neighborhood of its Marvel-mate Thor, which had a $25.5M opening day […]

  It was Bombs Away! for the weekend’s new openings, and even though SULLY (Village Roadshow/RatPac/Warners) will easily win the stanza, it’s not performing thrillingly either.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, its second Friday was $6.3M, down 48% from last week’s opening day.  By comparison, the 2d Friday for Bridge of Spies was down […]

  The most interesting box office story of the weekend is WARCRAFT (Legendary/Universal).  It’s a dud in the US, with $11M on Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, which with its frontloaded fan audience probably means a $25M or so weekend and a domestic total that may not reach $75M.  That’s not much on […]

How big a flop is BATTLESHIP (Universal)?  Even bigger than the catastrophic John Carter, that’s how big.  According to early Friday numbers at Deadline, Battleship is headed for a $9.5M opening day, and if that number holds, it’ll be less than John Carter‘s $9.8M.  Carter made it to $30M in its opening weekend, thanks to […]

> Deadline has some preliminary numbers for Friday’s boxoffice, and as expected, REAL STEEL is headed for a weekend victory.  Assuming that it gets the Saturday bump that usually goes to pictures targeted at family audiences, Steel should reach around $26-27M for the weekend, in line with Mitch Metcalf’s predictions.  That number will still leave […]

  There were no new openings for New Year’s weekend, and not much in the way of surprises among the returning titles.  ROGUE ONE (Lucasfilm/Disney) continued its ride through the holidays with $18.1M on Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  That’s up about 8% from Thursday, and business should go down on New Year’s […]

  The $17.1M opening day (including $3.4M from Thursday night) for GHOSTBUSTERS (Columbia/Sony) reported in preliminary numbers at Deadline would be fine if the movie were at the same budget level as previous Paul Feig/Melissa McCarthy collaborations The Heat or Spy.  But Ghostbusters cost 2-3x as much, $275M+ including production and global marketing, and a […]