Despite a trio of new arrivals, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT (Skydance/Alibaba/Paramount) will ride strong reviews and word of mouth to an easy second consecutive weekend crown.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have Friday at $9.8M, down 57% from last week, and better than the 60% drop for the 2nd Friday of Rogue Nation.  With that […]

  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, […]

> GREEN LANTERN cost at least as much as Thor ($350-400M with worldwide marketing), and will probably open around 15% lower–and Thor is no blockbuster hit.  Which means that although intensive promos got bodies into theatres, Warners and DC aren’t out of the woods.  The picture only scored a B on Cinemascore despite what must […]

> Behold Liam Neeson, King of January. OPENINGS:  THE GREY (Open Road) will easily take the weekend, albeit at a lower level than prior Neeson early-year thrillers.  Given that this one features killer wolves and hypothermia rather than gunfights and car chases, that’s not unexpected, and the picture should hit a decent profit.  ONE FOR […]

  Bond is Boxoffice.  Big boxoffice. OPENINGS:  SKYFALL (Sony/MGM) and its $30.8M opening day (that doesn’t include $2.2M from Thursday’s IMAX-only “previews”) was about 12% ahead of the first day for Quantum of Solace in 2008.  But that spread should get wider over the weekend, as mediocre word-of-mouth gave Solace only a 2.5x multiplier for […]

  It’s a best of times, worst of times kind of weekend for the newcomers. OPENINGS:  DESPICABLE ME 2 (Universal) is everything its makers could have wanted at the box office.  With a $30.2M Friday, it should have $140M in the US by Sunday (it won’t match the $97.9M Independence Day weekend of Transformers 3, but […]

  OPENINGS:  NON-STOP (Universal) had the Friday lead with $10M, but that doesn’t mean it’ll take the weekend.  In any case, Universal’s investment will pay off handsomely–it covered only $12M of the budget for US rights (plus marketing costs in its territory, of course), and a likely weekend in the high $20Ms should mean US […]

  OPENINGS:  None, really, although you could stretch and include THE PYRAMID (20th), an ultra-low budget, barely-marketed “found-footage” horror item that opened at just 589 theatres.  It made $458K on Friday, and probably won’t get much past $1M for the weekend, not enough to pay even for its very limited costs. HOLDOVERS:  Instead, for the […]