It’s a yearly irony that on the most moviecentric weekend of the year, hardly anyone goes to the movies. OPENINGS:  Dwayne Johnson’s vehicle SNITCH (Summit/Lionsgate) will lead the newcomers, but may face difficulty over the course of the weekend as The Rock’s fans discover it isn’t really the action movie it’s been marketed as […]

  OPENINGS:  When Paramount pushed the next Paranormal Activity to 2014, it seemed to give CARRIE (Screen Gems/Sony/MGM) an open field to own the Halloween movie season.  But audiences weren’t interested, and Carrie managed only a $6.6M opening day on the way to a likely $15M weekend, a major disappointment considering the auspices (the classic […]

  OPENINGS:  THINK LIKE A MAN TOO (Screen Gems/Sony) had almost exactly the same start as the first Think, up $75K from that movie’s opening day at $12.2M.  Being a sequel, though, it will likely fail to reach Think‘s $33.6M opening weekend or $91.5M US total.  Despite a somewhat larger production cost this time around ($40M compared to […]

  INFERNO (LStar/Columbia/Sony) was expected to earn less than The Da Vinci Code ($217.5M US/$540.7M overseas) and Angels & Demons ($133.4M/$352.6M), which is why Sony spent $75M less to produce the new film.  But that still leaves $200M in production/marketing costs, and Inferno is flopping too badly to have much chance of profit.  According to […]

  Its studio did everything in its corporate power to keep the quality of TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (Huahua/Paramount) from infecting ticket sales, preventing any reviews from appearing until the projectors had started on the movie’s first paid screenings.  But audiences knew what was coming, and in the US, Transformers 5 will be by far […]

  BLACK PANTHER (Marvel/Disney) is, in a word, colossal.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, opening day was $76.6M (including $25.2M from Thursday night), which would make it the #8 opening day of all time, and the highest non-Avengers opening day in Marvel history.  Let’s remember, though, that it’s impossible to tell from opening day […]

  After two weeks of sloth, Hollywood started rolling out its pre-holiday product.  The weekend’s easy winner will be SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (Sony Animation/Columbia/Sony), which had a $12.6M Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, including $3.5M from Thursday night.  That should give it a $35M+ weekend.  Projections after that are tough, because there […]

>Among Tyler Perry movies that feature his Madea character, BIG HAPPY FAMILY is looking relatively weak, but it may have a big Easter Sunday. Other pictures likely to benefit from family crowds include RIO, HOP and SOUL SURFER. On the other hand, the teen girl crowd typically turns out opening night, which could give WATER FOR […]