VENOM (Tencent/Columbia/Sony) is the first big-budget action movie to open since The Meg in mid-August, and that (plus a huge marketing campaign) seems to have gotten it past murderous reviews for an enormous start, the biggest ever in October.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have opening day at $32.3M (including $10M from a Thursday that […]

> Deadline has some early updated weekend numbers, and there are no major surprises from the Friday results.  The top 3 are DOLPHIN TALE, MONEYBALL and THE LION KING with $14M, $12M and $11M respectively, with the family pictures garnering the benefit of stepped-up Saturday matinee business.   After that, 3 new titles–50/50, COURAGEOUS and DREAM […]

  The Saturday boxoffice news was better for some titles than others.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, TAKEN 2 (20th) held about even on Saturday, which is reasonable for an action-movie sequel.  Recent comparisons:  The Bourne Legacy had a 4% bump on its 2d day of release, while The Expendables 2 dropped 3%.  If […]

  New Year’s Eve box office results were all over the place, with kids still home from school while adults chose some movies (but not others) as their picks to see out the year.  Also, not all studios have yet reported their Tuesday numbers, notably Sony, Universal, Lionsgate and The Weinstein Company.  Still, here’s what […]

  The negligible horror cheapie INCARNATE (High Top/Blumhouse/Universal) is the only new wide opening of the post-Thanksgiving weekend, and with just $800K on Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline and a weekend that may not break $2M, even the ultra-low budget Blumhouse division may not be able to find any shred of profit from […]

  THE UPSIDE (STX/Lantern) survived the wreckage of the Weinstein Company bankruptcy, and found an opening between the end of the holiday movie season and next week’s MLK weekend, poking through with what preliminary numbers at Deadline put at a Friday-winning $7M (including $1.1M from Thursday night).  That should propel it to a weekend win […]

  SNOW WHITE & THE HUNTSMAN (Universal) had a 5% Friday-to-Saturday bump, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, which doesn’t say much for its word of mouth (the dreaded Battleship went up 11% on its second day of release).  That should still get Snow safely into the mid-$50Ms for the weekend, and now, like most […]

  JACK THE GIANT SLAYER (Warners) climbed in its 2nd day of release, but not high enough to make any real difference.  Jack, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, had a 60% Saturday bump, a good-but-not-great family audience increase (Escape From Planet Earth rose 80% on its 2d day a couple of weeks ago), which […]