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 […]

> The Hollywood Reporter has preliminary boxoffice numbers for Friday, and as expected, PUSS IN BOOTS will be the easy weekend winner.  Its $9-9.5M on Friday, if it holds, would probably mean $36-38M for the weekend, which would be a Halloween weekend record, but considerably below other fall animated films like Megamind ($12.5M Friday for […]

> Monday boxoffice is tricky to analyze, because as you’d expect, the all-time list of Monday grosses is largely a history of long holiday weekends, namely Memorial Day, July 4th, Martin Luther King Day, and Christmas/New Year’s week.  So strictly speaking, THE HUNGER GAMES’ $10.8M gross on its 4th day in theatres is only the […]

  TAKEN 2 (20th), as expected, is running away with the boxoffice this weekend.  Its opening day, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, is at $17.5M, not that much less than the $24.7M the original Taken made in its entire opening weekend in 2009.  The sequel should reach $45M or so for the weekend, although it […]

  MAN OF STEEL (Warners) had the opening it was looking for, with preliminary numbers at Deadline giving it $46M on Friday.  That includes $9M from Friday midnight shows, but not an additional $12M from Wal-Mart tie-in screenings at 7PM Thursday night.  Assuming the $46M number holds up, it should mean a $115-120M weekend ($132M […]

  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 […]

  Belying its title, DUMB AND DUMBER TO (Red Granite/Universal) picked a strategically smart weekend to debut, facing very little fresh competition (because of last weekend’s Big Hero 6/Interstellar double bill and next week’s The Hunger Games installment) and even less comedy.  The result was a strong $13.9M Friday (including $1.6M from Thursday night) according […]

  Labor Day weekend is always the exhausted last gasp of the summer movie season, but this year the studios didn’t even try.  Partly it’s the effect of August having generally been a disaster in 2015 (last year’s 4-day Labor Day span featured a $22.9M 5th weekend for Guardians of the Galaxy and $15.6M from […]