OPENINGS:  ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES (Paramount) eked out a Friday victory over The Hobbit, $8.7M to $8.6M, but Hobbit will likely take the weekend fairly easily, with perhaps $30M  to $27M for Anchorman.  Thanks to the holiday week coming up (Anchorman could take in $65M between Christmas and New Year’s), the comedy should top […]

  OPENINGS:  Kevin Hart has been hanging around the edges of being a movie star for a few years now, and RIDE ALONG (Universal) makes it official.  With a $14.5M Friday start, it could challenge Cloverfield for the Martin Luther King weekend title, currently at $46.1M.  For Universal, this is the start of a nicely […]

  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 […]

  The occasional piece of youth-oriented counterprogramming aside, the studios don’t bring out their big guns for Super Bowl Weekend, since Sunday is destined to be deflated.  Even by those standards, though, this is looking like a dim few days. The decision to hold the Coen Brothers’ star-studded HAIL, CAESAR! (Universal) out of 2015 awards […]

  It’s a deja vu weekend, as THE ACCOUNTANT (RatPac/Warners) had a $9M opening day (including $1.35M from Thursday night), according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, almost identical to last Friday’s $9.3M for The Girl On The Train (including $1.23M from Thursday night), another adult-aimed thriller with a production budget in the $40M range and […]

  Although some films have opened well against the Super Bowl, both counterprogramming (the Hannah Montana concert movie and Dear John) and playing toward the action genre (Taken and Chronicle), as a rule the studios stay away, and that was the case this year.  The only wide opening was the low-budget horror flick WINCHESTER (CBS/Lionsgate), […]

  OPENINGS:  PRISONERS (Warners) came in at $7M on Friday, a bit less than the initial $7.5M estimate.  That could indicate cooling word-of-mouth as the evening went on, or just overenthusiastic estimators.  The number is still above Argo‘s $5.9M start but it’s below the $8.3M for The Town, two other adult thrillers Warners released in […]

  On Friday, the big alien robots blew things up. OPENINGS:  TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (Paramount) got the Friday it was hoping for, the biggest day of 2014 at $41.6M, and one that gives the blockbuster a strong (although not certain) chance to hit the magic $100M mark on Sunday.  In addition, Transformers 4 earned $52M […]