The lack of any new wide openings and the arrival of the year’s Golden Globe nominations are making for a strong holdover weekend, although for some titles more than others.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET (Disney) continued to decline rather swiftly, down 38% from last Friday to $3.5M, where Moana […]

  WONDER WOMAN (RatPac/Wanda/Ten Cent/DC/Warners) is proving to be exactly what its studio–and the summer box office in general–needed.  For Warners, it’s giving the embattled DC mega-franchise its first taste of critical praise since the days of The Dark Knight, which is important in itself, and that’s paying off in ticket sales.  Preliminary numbers at […]

  OPENINGS:  ZERO DARK THIRTY (Sony) expanded to coincide with its Oscar nominations, and the strategy worked as planned, with the acclaimed (and, in some circles, attacked) drama easily carrying Friday with $9M, on its way to $25-27M for the weekend. It’s a massive embarrassment for GANGSTER SQUAD (Warners) that it was beaten by the […]

> RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES has a slew of positives going for it commercially:  the reportedly fairly low $93M production cost, the month of August ahead with its limited competition, strong support from an older audience that doesn’t flock to theatres on opening weekend, a genre and emphasis on visuals that should […]

  OPENINGS:  CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS 2 (Sony) had an even softer Friday than the early numbers claimed with $9.3M.  That’s barely ahead of the first Cloudy‘s $8.1M, and sequels tend to be more frontloaded than originals, which means the $35M weekend estimates being thrown around this morning, which assume exactly the same […]

  ALADDIN (Disney) marked a rebound from the opening day of Dumbo, with preliminary numbers at Deadline projecting $30.8M on Friday (including $7M from Thursday afternoon/evening), compared to $15.3M for Dumbo.  The Memorial Day holiday will provide an extra boost, so the 3-day weekend should be around $86M, with $106M by Monday.  Aladdin wasn’t cheap, […]

> The post-Thanksgiving weekend is usually brutal, and this year is no exception. BREAKING DAWN PART 1:  The likely 60% drop from last weekend is as expected for this very front-loaded series.  Right now the film is running $9M below New Moon‘s 2009 total at the same point in its run, but Breaking Dawn 1 […]

> The 10% drop for CARS 2 on Saturday is unusual, but by no means unheard of, for a big animated film (Toy Story 3 and Wall-E had similar drops, and they worked out OK).  Any additional slippage on Sunday beyond the 19% Disney is projecting, though, could be cause for concern.  The similar Saturday […]