It was Bombs Away! for the weekend’s new openings, and even though SULLY (Village Roadshow/RatPac/Warners) will easily win the stanza, it’s not performing thrillingly either.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, its second Friday was $6.3M, down 48% from last week’s opening day.  By comparison, the 2d Friday for Bridge of Spies was down […]

> Full weekend drops can be expected to hit a little harder than usual this week, because last week’s holiday weekend boosted Sunday receipts. TRANSFORMERS 3 had a second Friday about midway between those of its two predecessors ($14.9M compared to $10.8M and $18M, respectively), with a decline that was slightly worse than, but in […]

> Well-played, Marvel/Disney. THE AVENGERS:  Years of planning and marketing led to the 2d biggest opening day of all time, $80.5M, that was behind only Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and its $91.1M.  (And Deathly Hallows 2 was far more front-loaded with Thursday midnight money, $43.5M compared to Avengers’ $18.7M.)  Now, the […]

  OPENINGS:  MALEFICENT (Disney) didn’t come cheap–with worldwide marketing, its price-tag will top $300M.  But it seems to be money well spent, as its $24.2M Friday should propel it into a $70M+ weekend.  It’s also launching well overseas, with $20M on Friday from 35 markets (plus $21M from some of those markets in the 2 […]

> 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 […]

  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.  […]

  Nearly identical opening numbers for 3 new movies mean different things. OPENINGS:  Thanks to its older audience, TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE (Warners) may end up winning the weekend, and certainly having the highest overall gross of this weekend’s openings, even though with $4.2M, it was third place on Friday.  However, this is still a […]

  The negligible horror cheapie INCARNATE (High Top/Blumhouse/Universal) is the only new wide opening of the post-Thanksgiving weekend, and with just $800K on Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline and a weekend that may not break $2M, even the ultra-low budget Blumhouse division may not be able to find any shred of profit from […]