Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #33 of 2013 looks like an okay $120 million for the top 12 films, up 6% from the average for this weekend the past few years but down 6% from last year’s comparable weekend.  Opening at 2,933 theaters Friday, Lee Daniels’ The Butler from Weinstein grossed $8.3 million Friday and is on track […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #13 of 2014 looks like $126 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 10% from the average for this weekend the past several years.   Opening at 3,567 theaters Friday, Noah from Paramount grossed $14.9 million through Friday, putting the film on track for a $40.4 million opening weekend (slightly above our […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #44 of 2014 looks like $76 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down a big 38% the norm for this weekend ($123 million), which admittedly does not usually have Halloween ruining it by falling on Friday. Opening at 2,766 theaters, Nightcrawler from Open Road Films grossed $3.2 million Friday and […]

  GODS OF EGYPT (Summit/Lionsgate) has been sitting around for so long that Gerard Butler managed to make next week’s London Has Fallen in the interim, and its own studio has been bleating about how the downside had been limited through tax rebates and foreign pre-sales, so the ensuing thudding flop isn’t much of a […]

  INFERNO (LStar/Columbia/Sony) was expected to earn less than The Da Vinci Code ($217.5M US/$540.7M overseas) and Angels & Demons ($133.4M/$352.6M), which is why Sony spent $75M less to produce the new film.  But that still leaves $200M in production/marketing costs, and Inferno is flopping too badly to have much chance of profit.  According to […]

  Its studio did everything in its corporate power to keep the quality of TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (Huahua/Paramount) from infecting ticket sales, preventing any reviews from appearing until the projectors had started on the movie’s first paid screenings.  But audiences knew what was coming, and in the US, Transformers 5 will be by far […]

  OCEAN’S EIGHT (Village Roadshow/Warners) wasn’t expected to be a blockbuster, and its reported production budget of $70M was in keeping with that, although the A-level Warners marketing campaign will raise the price.  It’s performing at the high end of expectations with a $15.9M Friday (including $4M from Thursday night) according to preliminary numbers at […]

  The enduring respect and admiration for Get Out, and its own enthusiastic reviews, are pushing Jordan Peele’s US (Blumhouse/Perfect World/Universal) way past expectations.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, opening day was $28.6M (including $7.4M from Thursday night), which means that in one day, Us has already earned more than 85% of Get Out‘s […]