Hollywood continued to have box office gifts to unwrap on the day after Christmas. WIDE RELEASE: THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (New Line/MGM/Warners) gained 19% from Christmas Day on Friday to $15.7M, putting it back in first place, which it will probably hold for the 3-day weekend. That 19% increase is […]
STAR TREK BEYOND (Skydance/Alibaba/Huahua/Paramount) is showing a fair franchise hold by the standards of this summer. Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, it had a $23M opening day (including $5.5M from Thursday), down about 26% from the start of 2009’s Star Trek reboot. (2013’s Into Darkness opened on a Thursday, changing its weekend dynamic.) That suggests a $57M […]
Despite a trio of new entries as competition, BEAUTY & THE BEAST (Disney) wasn’t expected to have any trouble staying in control of its 2d weekend, and it didn’t. Preliminary numbers at Deadline have Friday at $21.2M, down 67% from opening day last week. That’s only an OK hold, compared to the drops of […]
THE MEG (Gravity/Warners) appears to be having the opposite box office experience from what we’ve come to associate with US/China action movies. In the US, it’s overperforming, perhaps helped by a calendar slot a week after Discovery’s yearly Shark Week: preliminary numbers at Deadline estimate opening day at $16.5M ($4M from Thursday night), which […]
It’s too soon to tell just how GODZILLA: KING OF THE MONSTERS (Legendary/Warners) will fare based on its $19.7M opening day (including $6.3M from Thursday), per preliminary numbers at Deadline. The reason is that the two previous installments of what Warners calls its “Monsterverse” have had strikingly divergent trajectories at the US box office. […]
> For all the wildly unexpected success of THE LION KING, Disney has limited boxoffice upside, because the new Blu-Ray hits the streets on October 4, and that’s not likely to be a date that can be changed. The Friday number for DRIVE is right on the edge between meeting expectations and disappointing them; its […]
> Hollywood, like teen girls before a Twilight opening, counts the hours until THE AVENGERS arrives. OPENINGS: Universal badly miscalculated when it scheduled THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT for a weekend when Think Like A Man and The Lucky One were both available for the romance market. The movie was moderately budgeted (although it had a substantial […]
Melissa McCarthy is a movie star. OPENINGS: She co-stars with Jason Bateman (who is also a producer of the movie), but there’s no doubt that IDENTITY THIEF (Universal) is being sold on McCarthy’s back, and the movie is off to a great $11.2M opening day. Frontloading and East Coast weather may hold it back […]