UPDATE:  There were no major changes in final Thursday box office figures.  FROZEN was even higher than the initial estimate at $9.1M, and ANCHORMAN 2 even steadier, down just 9% from Wednesday to $7.4M.  THE WOLF OF WALL STREET was slighty up at $6.6M, and so was AMERICAN HUSTLE at $6.4M.  THE SECRET LIFE […]

  It’s not as though expectations for GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (Marvel/Disney) were low–at the projected $70-75M level, it would have outgrossed the opening weekends of the original Captain America, Thor and Amazing Spider-Man.  But the movie blasted past those predictions with the force of an Infinity Stone, boasting a Friday reported at Deadline and […]

  It’s a deja vu weekend, as THE ACCOUNTANT (RatPac/Warners) had a $9M opening day (including $1.35M from Thursday night), according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, almost identical to last Friday’s $9.3M for The Girl On The Train (including $1.23M from Thursday night), another adult-aimed thriller with a production budget in the $40M range and […]

  Although some films have opened well against the Super Bowl, both counterprogramming (the Hannah Montana concert movie and Dear John) and playing toward the action genre (Taken and Chronicle), as a rule the studios stay away, and that was the case this year.  The only wide opening was the low-budget horror flick WINCHESTER (CBS/Lionsgate), […]

  After last weekend’s misfired The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, THE GRINCH (Illumination/Universal) is kicking off the family holiday movie season in a bigger way.  Early numbers at Deadline have opening day at $18.3M (including $2.2M from Thursday night), which should mean a $64M weekend, plus more on Monday, since many schools are closed […]

> Deadline has preliminary boxoffice figures for Wednesday, and there doesn’t seem to be great news for anyone.  BREAKING DAWN PART 1 appears to be the easy winner for the day and probably for Thanksgiving weekend, but its $12.5M for Wednesday, if it holds, would be more than 10% off the parallel date for 2009’s […]

> It seems like only yesterday that we were reviewing the records for midnight openings (actually, it was March 23, when The Hunger Games opened with a 7th-highest $19.7M Thursday midnight–the highest ever for a non-sequel).  Now we’re just a few hours away from the US arrival of THE AVENGERS, which… is it a sequel?  […]

  It’s impossible to know at this point how the unspeakable events in Newtown on Friday will affect family behavior over the weekend, and even though this tragedy, unlike the Aurora massacre in July, has no direct connection to movies or theaters, the crowds that might have attended matinees of a four-quadrant event like THE […]