> Fuller numbers are in, and they show a surprising near-tie on Friday between RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, THE HELP and FINAL DESTINATION 5, all at $7.3-7.8M for the day.  The Apes have the presumptive advantage over the weekend, because 2d weekends are less front-loaded than openings, but since The Help started […]

> Deadline has initial boxoffice figures for Friday, and if the numbers hold, the results seem to be a healthy amount higher than last year’s Friday before New Year’s, allowing the holiday period–and the year–to end on an up note. (Note, however, that overall comparisons to 2010’s holidays are skewed by the fact that 2011 […]

  THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) is headed for a strong post-4th of July weekend, according to preliminary Friday numbers at Deadline.  Spidey reportedly made $21M on Friday, which if that number holds would be a 33% increase over Thursday, signficantly better than the 18% Friday bump that Transformers had in its 4th of July week […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

  Friday night numbers for THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 (Sony) should be considered more preliminary than usual, because the $34-35M figures for the day at Deadline and elsewhere are based on the idea that while Amazing 2 had been tracking for around $30M for most of Friday, it suddenly upticked with Friday night’s shows–but on […]

  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 last time Halloween fell on a Saturday, in 2009, Hollywood mostly stayed away.  (The concert movie This Is It opened the previous Wednesday.)  This year, two studios tried to counterprogram the holiday with problematic star vehicles, and based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, the results weren’t pretty. BURNT (Weinstein) has been conspicuous for […]