> THE HANGOVER PART II seems to be headed for the 4th highest Memorial Day opening of all time, behind only Pirates 3, Indiana Jones 4 and X-Men 3–and at less than half the budget of any of them.  Unlike all 3 of those, it should have good word of mouth, being a classic example […]

> As detailed in Mitch Metcalf’s Boxoffice Report, Friday’s numbers were solid but lacking any breakout excitement.  First, let’s take a quick look at the limited-run Oscar hopefuls: THE IRON LADY (Weinstein):  Meryl-Streep-as-Margaret-Thatcher came roaring into the awards mix with a terrific $19K average in 4 theatres that should lead it to a $75-80K average […]

  Eventually, every franchise runs out of steam.  (Although they sometimes pick it up again, like Bond James Bond.) OPENINGS:  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 (Par) is off to a worse start than the last two in the series (the original Paranormal followed a different release pattern and didn’t go wide until its 5th week in theatres).  […]

  OPENINGS:  Is it a danger sign or just one of overexuberance that the Friday estimates for MAN OF STEEL (Warners) diminished during the day, slipping from over $50M to the final estimate of $44.1M?  We’ll know a lot more on Sunday, when word of mouth has kicked in.  In any case, the gigantic amount […]

  Note:  all weekend-to-weekend comparisons to Jan 31-Feb 2 will look better than usual because of last week’s Super Bowl Sunday, which sharply depressed box office for the day. OPENINGS:  THE LEGO MOVIE (Warners) is likely to outgross its $60M production budget by Sunday after a $17.1M Friday, and while that won’t cover the usual […]

  In its time of need, Hollywood looked to Pixar for salvation, and FINDING DORY (Pixar/Disney) is delivering.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, its opening day was $53M (including $9.2M from Thursday evening), more than any animated film has ever made in a single day, ahead of the $47.1M that Shrek The Third earned […]

  GET OUT (Blumhouse/Universal) is the latest hit from the prolific low-budget horror production company that still has Split in the market, off to a fast start according to preliminary numbers at Deadline with $10.5M on Friday (including $1.8M from Thursday night).  Unlike most titles in the genre, Get Out also boasts terrific reviews (an […]

  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 […]