THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (Village Roadshow/MGM/Columbia/Sony), an expensive action movie in a month that doesn’t often feature them, and toplining the potent combo of Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt, is starting off moderately well but not exceptionally.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have its opening day at $13M (including $1.75M from Thursday night), slightly ahead of […]

  From the start, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (DreamWorks/Reliance/Universal) was perceived as a lower-intensity version of the Gone Girl phenomenon, and that’s holding with the opening of its film version.  Where Gone Girl had a $13.2M Friday start on its way to a $37.5M weekend, preliminary numbers at Deadline give Train $9.3M on Friday, […]

  What kind of summer movie season has it been, really?  For the past several weeks, business has been consistently up, erasing the losses from a soft spring, and even with 3D, Imax and inflation taken into account, more tickets are being sold.  But this marks the fourth consecutive weekend that an expensive, high-profile summer […]

  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 […]

  The holiday box office has turned out to be AQUAMAN (DC/Warners), and then everything else.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have its 3rd Friday at $16.8M, up 15% from Thursday and down 40% from last Friday, for a likely $51M weekend, and $215M by New Year’s Day.  Comparisons to other DC releases at the same […]

  JURASSIC WORLD (Legendary/Universal) is stomping past even the the highest expectations for its opening.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, its opening day was a stupendous $78.6M (including $18.5M from Thursday night), giving it the biggest June box office day ever by far, easily passing the $68.5M for Twilight: Eclipse, and in line for […]

  OPENINGS:  A bit surprisingly, perhaps, Pixar’s recent movies haven’t exploded at the Saturday/Sunday matinee box office, with merely normal (as opposed to “family”) weekend multiples off their Friday openings.  So MONSTERS UNIVERSITY (Disney/Pixar) is likely headed to a $75-78M weekend after a $30.5M Friday, slightly less than anticipated.  That’s still Pixar’s 2d-best opening ever (behind […]

  OPENINGS:  The magic weekend number for THE BOURNE LEGACY (Universal) is probably $40M, now that Friday has come in a bit lower than preliminary estimates suggested at $14M.  Unless business collapses on Saturday, expect the Sunday estimate to begin with a “4,” although in fact the final weekend figure (released on Monday) could be […]