The box office race is likely to be tight this weekend, with contenders at either end of the quality spectrum.  THE EMOJI MOVIE (Columbia/Sony) drew first blood with a $10.2M opening day (including $900K from Thursday night), according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  That’s $2.2M better than the first day of Captain Underpants last […]

  THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART (Warners Animation) is looking like a textbook example of a studio watering down its own franchise.  Warners jumped into 2 spin-offs before even reaching its first official sequel, and the result according to early numbers at Deadline is a $8.9M opening day, down 48% from the first […]

> Deadline has the early Saturday and weekend boxoffice estimates, and this is what “frontloaded” looks like:  HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS (PART 2) plummeted by 52% from Friday (including midnights) to Saturday, with the result that its $44.2M on Saturday didn’t even come close to the Spiderman 3 record of $51.3M for that […]

  And now we know which was more front-loaded. OPENINGS:  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, TED (Universal) fell 10-15% from Friday to Saturday, which is about the same way the original Hangover played.  The weekend should still get to at least $50M, ahead of Hangover, making it potentially the highest-opening original R-rated comedy ever. MAGIC MIKE […]

  Considering its genre and target audience, BAD GRANDPA (Paramount) did very well in its second day, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, slipping just 4% to $12M.  By comparison, the three Jackass movies went down 20%/14%/24% on their first Saturdays, suggesting strong word of mouth and possibly a longer stay in theatres than one […]

  There wasn’t much shift in position among the top titles at the Saturday box office.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES (Nickelodeon/Paramount) kept its $1M edge over GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (Marvel/Disney), roughly $11M to $10M.  For Turtles, that’s down about 50% from last Saturday, and suggests it will end […]

  This weekend was expected to belong to LOGAN (TSG/20th), and the R-rated, critically acclaimed superhero drama is delivering in a big way.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have opening day at $32M (including $8.5M from Thursday night), about 2/3 of Deadpool‘s first day, which was itself boosted by a 4-day holiday weekend.  Among R-rated action […]

  Those waiting for Marvel to stumble will have to go on waiting.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, THOR: RAGNAROK (Marvel/Disney) had a $46M opening day (including $14.5M from Thursday night), the highest for any Marvel Universe title released outside the May-July corridor.  Opening day was up 44% from the start of Thor:  The […]