There were no new wide releases on this pre-holiday, pre-Last Jedi weekend, so all the action was in holdovers and limited releases.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, COCO (Pixar/Disney) easily retained its crown with a $6.3M Friday.  That was down 67% from last week’s holiday Friday, better than the drops for Moana (70%) […]

> 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 […]

  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline and elsewhere, MALEFICENT (Disney) gained just 6% on Saturday from its Friday start, not a great bump for a family movie, giving it around $25.5M on Saturday and a weekend that now looks like it won’t quite reach $70M, more like $67M.  It’s behaving like Alice In Wonderland (up […]

  Most films will rise this weekend compared to last week, simply because New Year’s Eve is a bigger moviegoing occasion than Christmas Eve.  Generally, box office should rise 20% or so on Saturday, drop around 30% on Sunday, then jump 30-40% on New Year’s Day.  The first two weekends of 2018 should feature relatively […]

  STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Lucasfilm/Disney) was expected to be gigantic, but not quite as huge as 2015’s The Force Awakens, which benefited from a decade of pent-up expectations.  That’s exactly where it’s heading, as preliminary numbers at Deadline have Friday at $100.4M, of which $45M is from Thursday night.  That opening day is […]

  Considering the spotty box office record of the DC movie franchise, it was something of a risk to place AQUAMAN (DC/Warners) at the center of the holiday market, but the bet is paying off, at least to an extent.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, opening day for Aquaman was technically $27.7M, although that […]

  ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT (20th) continued with its underwhelming opening on Saturday, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.   The 4th in the animated series had no Saturday matinee bump, holding at $16.5M for a 2d consecutive day (the previous Friday openings in the series had gone up 43% and 28% on their 2d days), […]

  The phenomenon of It having had its day, weekend box office is starting to look more familiar, which is to say subdued.  KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE (MARV/20th) will take the weekend, but hardly in impressive fashion.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have opening day at $15.7M, which includes $3.4M from Thursday night.  2 years ago, […]