>The Help remains the lone sign of strength at the box office.  Down only 2% from the Tropical Storm Irene-dampened box office last weekend, The Help has been upgraded again to $155 million estimated total domestic gross.  The Debt looks like the best of the three new openers, with almost $10 million this Friday-Sunday weekend […]

  JOHN WICK CHAPTER 3: PARABELLUM (Thunder Road/Summit/Lionsgate) marks a rarity these days, a solid and growing mid-level action franchise.  The first John Wick collected $5.4M on its first day and $14.4M for the weekend, the second was at $11M/$30.4M, and according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Parabellum‘s first day was at $22.5M (including $5.9M […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #8 of 2015 looks like $112 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, somewhat above the norms for this weekend.   Opening at 2,575 theaters Friday, The DUFF from CBS Films and Lionsgate/Summit is on track for an $11.1 million opening three-day weekend (above our $7.5 million ShowBuzzDaily forecast earlier this week). The […]

  Hollywood generally has little interest in opening films against the Super Bowl, and to the extent it participates, it tries to counterprogram the game by aiming at the young female demographic.  Thus we have a PG-13 horror movie and a YA fantasy-romance this weekend, but neither is finding much of an audience. RINGS (Paramount) […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #7 of 2015 looks like $188 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, well above the norms for this weekend.   Opening at 3,646 theaters Friday, Fifty Shades of Grey from Focus/ Universal is on track for a $77.0 million opening three-day weekend (comfortably above our $67.5 million ShowBuzzDaily forecast earlier this week). […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #29 of 2015 looks like $176 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, very close to the norm for this weekend but way above last year’s weak weekend. Opening at 3,856 theaters Friday, Ant-Man from Marvel and Disney is on track for a $57.5 million opening three-day weekend (somewhat below our $64.5 million ShowBuzzDaily forecast […]

  Expectations were low for the holiday weekend’s expensive new openings, and that’s proving to be accurate.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it was the low-budget THE PURGE:  ELECTION YEAR (Blumhouse/Universal) that led the group on Friday with $13.4M (including $3.6M from Thursday night), better than the $13M opening day for Anarchy, the last […]

The 36th weekend of 2012 is looking like $50 million for the Top 12 films Friday-Sunday, near recent record lows for box office volume.  Equally weak weekends were last seen in 2003 and 2008.  The Possession is holding on to the top spot this weekend (with less than $10 million for the #1 film, yikes), […]