Despite some of the best reviews of the year for any movie, big studio or indie, WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (TSG/20th) is off to a merely OK start.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it had a $21.1M opening day (including $5M from Thursday night), putting it 24% behind the $27.6M […]

> 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 […]

  SAN ANDREAS (Village Roadshow/Warners) is off to a mid-range start, with preliminary Friday numbers at Deadline giving it a $17.5M opening day (including $3.1M from Thursday night), which is slightly ahead of the $16.6M opening day of Mad Max: Fury Road.  No one really cares that its likely $45M weekend will be Dwayne Johnson’s […]

  The MCU continues to be America’s uber-franchise, as SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME (Columbia/Sony) became the first summer mega-movie in several weeks to fully live up to expectations.  Few films have opened on the Tuesday before a Thursday July 4th, so comparisons aren’t exact, but Far From Home earned $91.5M on its Tuesday-Thursday (The Amazing […]

  Preliminary box office numbers at Deadline have THE HEAT (20th) overperforming with a $15M Friday, which could give it a $40M opening weekend, almost as much as the movie cost to produce.  That means the first 3 days for the Sandra Bullock/Melissa McCarthy pairing may nearly match the first 4 days of The Hangover […]

  After a sub-par Thursday, preliminary numbers at Deadline have THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (New Line/MGM/Warners) surging to $16.1M on Friday.  If that number holds, it will be a tremendous 62% jump from Thursday, which would be a better percentage result than any of the Lord of the Rings movies (which […]

  The final chapter in the TWILIGHT saga, BREAKING DAWN PART 2, began its swoop through the boxoffice last night, and earned $30.4M.  This is, unquestionably, a ton of money, and technically–very narrowly–a record for the Twilight franchise, just barely beating out Breaking Dawn Part 1‘s $30.3M (although nowhere near the all-time midnight record $43.5M […]

> The new PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 is off to a good start:  its $8M boxoffice from midnight shows last night was 30% higher than Paranormal 2‘s midnight performance, and in a league with Hangover 2‘s $10.4M, which is the highest ever for an R-rated title. Sequels, of course, tend to be increasingly more front-loaded, so […]