The holiday box office has turned out to be AQUAMAN (DC/Warners), and then everything else.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have its 3rd Friday at $16.8M, up 15% from Thursday and down 40% from last Friday, for a likely $51M weekend, and $215M by New Year’s Day.  Comparisons to other DC releases at the same […]

  After a sub-par Thursday, preliminary numbers at Deadline have THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (New Line/MGM/Warners) surging to $16.1M on Friday.  If that number holds, it will be a tremendous 62% jump from Thursday, which would be a better percentage result than any of the Lord of the Rings movies (which […]

  PAIN & GAIN (Paramount) may take the last weekend before the summer movie season starts, but based on the preliminary numbers at Deadline, it’s not going to win very impressively, with a $7M Thursday night/Friday that should give it a $17-19M weekend, right where Mitch Metcalf’s weekend predictions had put it.  Pain was shot on […]

  NOTE:  THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED THROUGHOUT TO REFLECT OFFICIAL STUDIO ESTIMATES FOR THURSDAY. As is customary during Christmas-New Year’s week, the majority of the holiday movies stayed fairly stable on Thursday, varying only a few hundred thousand dollars from the day before.  The major exception, based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, was LES […]

  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 […]

  It’s clear, based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, that DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate) isn’t going to reach prerelease hopes of an opening in line with the $69M of the original Twilight, much less that movie’s sequels or The Hunger Games.  The question is how low it will go.  Divergent had around $22M on Friday (which includes […]

  For the third consecutive weekend, BLACK PANTHER (Marvel/Disney) is having its way with the box office.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have Panther down 43% from last Friday to $16.3M, which should give it a $62M weekend, bringing its US total close to $500M.  That will put its 17-day total well ahead of the $457.7M […]

> Despite all Universal‘s efforts to imprint audiences with the idea that THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT is some kind of quasi-sequel to Bridesmaids (it’s not), preliminary numbers at Deadline show the movie to be underperforming badly.  Its $3.7M Friday was only in 3rd place for the day, well below the $6M opening day the same creative […]