With Halloween, a traditionally slow moviegoing day, falling on Friday next week, this is the de facto Halloween movie weekend, which left a clear path for the low-budget OUIJA (Universal).  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it pulled in $8M on Friday (including over $900K from Thursday night), which should take it to a […]

  This weekend, Denzel Washington is proving himself yet again one of the last truly reliable movie stars.  Just a week after Liam Neeson flopped with A Walk Among the Tombstones, preliminary numbers at Deadline have THE EQUALIZER (Columbia/Sony) at $12.5-13M on Friday (including $1.5M from Thursday night)–roughly the same amount ($12.7M) Tombstones made in […]

  THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS (Universal) will win its third consecutive box office weekend, but in the US it continues to run with considerably less than vroom-vroom momentum.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it fell 54% from last Friday to $5.1M, and is heading for a $18M weekend.  It’s now clear that Fate […]

> Sony jump-started the release of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO last night with early runs starting at 7PM at its slightly less than 3000 theatres.  Early reports are that it pulled in $1.6M for those showings.  There aren’t a lot of R-rated Tuesday night “preview” comparisons to draw on (OK, there are none), […]

  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%) […]

> THE HUNGER GAMES held fairly well on its first Tuesday, dropping around 4% to $10.3M.  This isn’t quite as good as it sounds, because Tuesday is generally an up day (except where Monday is part of a holiday weekend), and the other Top 10 movies rose by 9-24%.  However, it’s not unusual for new […]

  Both Warner Bros and the Rentrak organization, which formally reports boxoffice receipts for the studios, have chosen not to announce grosses for this weekend, out of respect for the terrible events that occurred in Colorado on Thursday night (and possibly to avoid any sense that the studios are reaping profits at such a difficult […]

  We’re in the 2-week void between Thanksgiving and the Awakening of the Force, and the low-budget KRAMPUS (Legendary/Universal) is the weekend’s only major studio arrival.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it’s performing a tad beyond expectations with $6.25M on Friday.  Given the quick burn-out for horror movies, that should mean a $13-15M weekend, […]