None of the weekend’s openings were expected to come near last week’s blockbuster opening, and none will.  The target Christian audience is turning out for RISEN (Affirm/Columbia/Sony), with preliminary numbers at Deadline putting it at $4.25M for Friday.  Given its demographics, Risen should hold well through the weekend, particularly on Sunday, which could give […]

  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 […]

  It’s a busy but not particularly big weekend at the multiplex.  The weekend’s winner will be BOO 2! A MADEA HALLOWEEN (Lionsgate), which did a fairly good job of holding the audience for last year’s original Boo.  Deadline reports a preliminary $7.5M opening day, down 21% from Boo‘s start.  If that percentage holds, the […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #50 of 2013 looks like $144 million for the top 12 films from Friday-Sunday, not as strong as we had forecast but still up double digits in terms of percent increase over comparable weekends the past several years.   Opening at 3,903 theaters Friday, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug from Warner Brothers […]

  The gamble of CRAZY RICH ASIANS (Color Force/SK Global/Warners) is paying off with solid returns.  The film opened on Wednesday and earned $8.8M in its first two days, and preliminary numbers at Deadline have its Friday at $7M.  That should give it a $21M 3-day weekend and around $30M since opening day.  A $70M […]

  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 […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #13 of 2015 looks like $150 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, above the norms for this weekend. Opening at 3,708 theaters Friday, Home from Fox and DreamWorks Animation is on track for a $58.0 million opening three-day weekend (way above our non-believing $28.0 million ShowBuzzDaily forecast earlier this week). The film […]

  It’s too soon to tell just how GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (Legendary/Warners) will fare based on its $19.7M opening day (including $6.3M from Thursday), per preliminary numbers at Deadline.  The reason is that the two previous installments of what Warners calls its “Monsterverse” have had strikingly divergent trajectories at the US box office.  […]