All this summer’s box office needed for burial was a shovel, and Hollywood provided that with a Labor Day line-up devoid of any genuinely wide new releases.  The result is going to be ugly, except for a few hardy holdovers. The widest release of the weekend isn’t new at all:  it’s the one-week 901-theatre […]

  There’s usually a box office hangover after a holiday weekend opening, but the Friday-to-Friday drop for SOLO (Lucasfilm/Disney) was particularly sour, down 77% to $8M in preliminary numbers at Deadline, compared to the 73% for last year’s Pirates of the Caribbean V, and 74% for X-Men: Days of Future Past.  In fact, it was […]

  The other studios didn’t try very hard to compete with the second weekend of CAPTAIN MARVEL (Marvel/Disney), and the blockbuster will have no trouble repeating as #1 this week.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, the Friday-to-Friday drop was 70% (to $18.8M), which sounds like a lot, but is fairly standard for the genre.  […]

> The seventh weekend of 2012 is another good one, running ahead of last year and the multi-year average for this weekend.  The Vow should hold on to the top spot, with Safe House a close #2, and Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance opening in third place for the weekend.  This Means War is basically […]

> Two comedies open above $20 million this weekend (one at forecast and one slightly below), while Transformers 3 stays at #1 and its ShowBuzzDaily Domestic Final has been upgraded.  However, the weekend as a whole is down significantly from this weekend last year.  Horrible Bosses opened almost exactly at forecast ($9.9 million Friday for […]

Weekend #44 is on pace to almost match the multi-year average for this weekend and exceed the same weekend last year, which was missing an animated family film.  This year Wreck-It Ralph props up the weekend, as Megamind did on this weekend in 2010 and Madagascar 2 did in 2008.  Flight is solid but not […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #22 of 2013 looks like a decent $154 million for the top 12 films, up around 10% from comparable weekends the past few years.  Generally, box office is lower than we forecast on Wednesday.  Now You See Me is the one film that exceeded our forecast, while the other opener […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #2 of 2014 looks like $121 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 12% from the average for the same weekend the past few years (but better than we forecast earlier this week). Opening at 2,876 theaters Friday, Lone Survivor from Universal grossed $14.4 million Friday, putting the Peter Berg-directed Afghanistan War […]