VENOM (Tencent/Columbia/Sony) is the first big-budget action movie to open since The Meg in mid-August, and that (plus a huge marketing campaign) seems to have gotten it past murderous reviews for an enormous start, the biggest ever in October.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have opening day at $32.3M (including $10M from a Thursday that […]

> 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 […]

> Yep, that happened. OPENINGS:  THE HUNGER GAMES (Lionsgate/Summit) was as massive as predicted, with a $68.3M opening day that was the 5th largest in movie history, behind only the final Harry Potter and the last 3 Twilights, and slightly ahead of The Dark Knight.  The question, of course, is what happens today.  The Friday […]

  OPENINGS:  LES MISERABLES (Universal) fell behind DJANGO UNCHAINED (Weinstein/Sony) for the first time on Friday, because Les Miz was up only 3% from Thursday, while Django rose more impressively by 17%.  Both should be around $85M by New Year’s Day.  Conventional wisdom has it that Les Miz will benefit more from Oscar season than Django, […]

  OPENINGS:  THE WORLD’S END (Focus/Universal) is off to a very solid start, with a $2250 per-theatre average on Friday in just 1549 theatres, giving it a $3.5M day and a weekend that could hit $10M.  That compares well to the other entries in Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg’s “Cornetto Trilogy,” even though World’s End has the […]

  This will be the last weekend without a mega-hit on top for a while. OPENINGS:  THE OTHER WOMAN (20th) will take the weekend with around $25M after a $9.3M Friday, and the potentially better news is that Diaz’s last hit Bad Teacher was even stronger overseas than in the US (not a sure thing […]

  No one expected this weekend’s soft new arrivals to come near last week’s holdovers, and they’re not.  LOVE THE COOPERS (CBS/Lionsgate) is at least creditable, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, with a $2.7M Friday that should give it $7-8M for the weekend.  Coopers is intended as a long-term play that will hang around […]

  Although it’s possible for a horror or action movie to make some money over Labor Day weekend, no studio opens a movie it cares about for the holiday that repels moviegoers.  This weekend’s openings won’t change that rule.  THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS (DreamWorks/Reliant/Participant/Touchstone/Disney) was probably envisioned as an awards-worthy project when it was originally […]