MINIONS (Illumination/Universal) was expected to enfold the weekend box office in its little yellow fingers, and so it is.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline give it a $45M opening day, which appears to be the largest opening in the history of movie animation (the asterisk is because we now consider “Friday” to include Thursday night, […]

  ANT-MAN & THE WASP (Marvel/Disney) will be Marvel’s lowest-grossing 2018 release, but it was designed to have relatively minor stakes, and while it’s not in a league with Black Panther or Avengers: Infinity War, on its own terms it’s performing impressively.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, opening day was $34M (including $11.5M from […]

  The numbers at Deadline are very preliminary, but it’s clear there will be no surprises at the boxoffice this weekend.  Pixar/Disney’s BRAVE has expertly shot arrows into the backs of everything else in the market, and will tower over the weekend.  Reports are that the film made $25M on Friday, on par with Cars […]

  With July 4th falling on a Saturday for the 1st time since 2009, this was fated to be a slow holiday at the box office.  Nevertheless, the weekend’s openings were supposed to be able to overtake titles that have already been in the market for 3-4 weeks.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, however, […]

> According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, the weekend is looking auspicious for Mark Wahlberg’s CONTRABAND.  The modestly budgeted thriller (which, however, Universal has been expensively marketing for a solid month) is reporting a $7.7M Friday, which could mean $25-28M over the 4-day holiday weekend. Disney’s 3D re-release of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is also […]

  It’s a busy but not particularly big weekend at the multiplex.  The weekend’s winner will be BOO 2! A MADEA HALLOWEEN (Lionsgate), which did a fairly good job of holding the audience for last year’s original Boo.  Deadline reports a preliminary $7.5M opening day, down 21% from Boo‘s start.  If that percentage holds, the […]

> For anyone who thought the angst over JOHN CARTER‘s boxoffice returns was overstated:  Disney has issued a public statement advising that it expects the film to result in a $200M loss, which will singlehandedly pull the Disney film studio as a whole to a loss of $80-120M for this calendar quarter.  That’s less horrific […]

The complete Friday Box Office report will be posted at its usual time Saturday morning, but in the meantime we have one big over-performer in Despicable Me 2, one opener slightly above forecast (Kevin Hart) and one flat-out, embarrassing bomb (Lone Ranger), doing even worse than our bearish expectations. With $34.3 million Wednesday and $24.5 million […]