OPENINGS:  Even though it technically opened last year, 2015 has its first blockbuster hit with AMERICAN SNIPER (Warners/Village Roadshow).  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Clint Eastwood’s newly-minted Best Picture nominee exceeded all expectations with $29.1M on Friday (including $5.3M from Thursday night screenings).  That one-day figure alone puts it ahead of all but […]

  THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE, the 600-pound gorilla of the holiday movie box office season (The Hobbit 2 is by comparison a smaller simian, at least in the US) opens tonight, and the question is just how big it will be.  The first Hunger Games opened in March 2012 and had the 6th biggest […]

  Just a week after a new September mark was set, Ridley Scott’s THE MARTIAN (20th) is going to compete for the highest-ever October opening.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Martian had an opening day that matched or even slightly topped the $17.5M for Gravity, which set the current October record at $55.8M.  ($2.5M […]

  With a marketplace starved of adult comedy after the failure of Bad Santa 2, and the holiday deluge of product not quite here, this weekend is proving to be good timing for the arrival of OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY (DreamWorks/Paramount).  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Office had a $6.7M Friday (including $950K from Thursday night), and depending […]

  Be sure to read Mitch Metcalf’s Weekend Box Office Predictions. Momentum was lacking for THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES (Screen Gems/Sony), as the studio kept the movie from critics until the last possible instant and didn’t even have night-before screenings for audiences–one of the only films of the summer to wait till 12:01AM […]

  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 […]

  Oscar weekend boxoffice is one of those chicken-and-egg situations where it’s not clear whether the major studios stay away because no one goes to the movies that weekend, or if no one goes to the movies because there’s nothing new to see.  However self-fulfilling the prophecy may be, things are quiet at the multiplex […]

  There were no new wide releases on this pre-holiday, pre-Last Jedi weekend, so all the action was in holdovers and limited releases.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, COCO (Pixar/Disney) easily retained its crown with a $6.3M Friday.  That was down 67% from last week’s holiday Friday, better than the drops for Moana (70%) […]