The phenomenon of It having had its day, weekend box office is starting to look more familiar, which is to say subdued.  KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE (MARV/20th) will take the weekend, but hardly in impressive fashion.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have opening day at $15.7M, which includes $3.4M from Thursday night.  2 years ago, […]

  The $17.1M opening day (including $3.4M from Thursday night) for GHOSTBUSTERS (Columbia/Sony) reported in preliminary numbers at Deadline would be fine if the movie were at the same budget level as previous Paul Feig/Melissa McCarthy collaborations The Heat or Spy.  But Ghostbusters cost 2-3x as much, $275M+ including production and global marketing, and a […]

  Box office discussions about AVENGERS: ENDGAME (Marvel/Disney) will revolve around records broken and those likely to fall.  The first to go was the Thursday night record, which is now $60M (beating The Force Awakens‘s $57M and 54% above Infinity War‘s $39M), and now preliminary numbers at Deadline have Endgame‘s Thursday/Friday at $157M, absolutely smashing […]

> Gary Ross should probably think twice before leaving THE HUNGER GAMES. THE HUNGER GAMES: Because of the Good Friday holiday, Friday numbers were unusually strong this week and Saturday’s will appear unusually weak. That could mean a 3rd weekend of around $33M for Hunger Games (Lionsgate/Summit) (depending on the Easter Sunday drop), which could […]

  A weak slate of newcomers is almost always good news for the holdovers in the market, and that will be the case this holiday weekend.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE (Warners Animation) declined a mild 45% from last week’s opening day to $8M, and should take in at least […]

> The Martin Luther King holiday weekend, a relatively small one for Hollywood because many people work on Monday, begins. UNIVERSAL: The studio made the fairly extraordinary decision to sit out the holiday movie season entirely, presumably because they didn’t think any of their product could compete.  They did, however, spend a lot of money […]

  JASON BOURNE (Universal) is performing in line with expectations.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have its opening day at $22M (including $4.3M from Thursday night), down just 10% from the $24.7M start (with no Thursday screenings) for 2007’s Bourne Ultimatum, the last Matt Damon/Paul Greenglass title in the franchise.  Great word of mouth gave Ultimatum […]

OPENINGS:  Both RESIDENT EVIL:  RETRIBUTION (Screen Gems/Sony) and FINDING NEMO 3D (Pixar/Disney) are softer than expected.  Evil is likely to have a $21M weekend, which would be the lowest opening in the series since the 2002 original, while Nemo’s probable $17M will be far below The Lion King 3D‘s $30.2M and barely even with Beauty […]