For the 13 days December 16-28, the top 10 films each day in North America have totaled $698 million, now -2% behind last year’s pace and -16% behind the record pace of 2015, when Star Wars: The Force Awakens dominated the holiday season. With Rogue One last year and The Last Jedi this year, the Star Wars franchise has definitely taken the holiday movie […]

  OPENINGS:  There were no new wide openings for New Year’s weekend. HOLDOVERS:  Word of mouth still operates in a pandemic, and it wasn’t at all friendly to WW84 (DC/Warners) which crumpled by 67% to $5.5M from one holiday weekend to the next.  It now seems highly unlikely to reach Tenet‘s $57.9M in the US […]

The 2014 holiday box office has pulled slightly ahead 2013 and remains somewhat above the average for the last decade or so. The top 10 films on Saturday January 3, 2015 totaled a very good $46.8 million, somewhat above the average $42.5 million for the days since 2002 when this date landed on a weekend. […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #52 of 2014 looks like $192 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up +21% from the norm for this weekend ($158 million) and up +6% from the same weekend last year.   Opening at 3,131 theaters Thursday, Unbroken from Universal is on track for a $32.3 million opening three-day weekend (well above […]

  A Valentine’s Day in the middle of Presidents Day weekend allowed for strong Sunday studio estimates–in one case, suspiciously so. OPENINGS:  A couple of notable sidelights to the gargantuan success of DEADPOOL (Marvel/20th), which has the #17 opening of all time at $135.1M (probably $155M with the Monday holiday), is now the highest-opening R-rated […]

UPDATE (19 days Dec 16-Jan 3): $757 million for the top 10 films in North America each day, now -6.5% below the average holiday box office since 2007 ($810 million over this span), ending up well below the pace of 2015-2017 when a Star Wars film anchored the holiday season but slightly above the pace of 2012-2014 […]

  TOMORROWLAND (Disney) appears to be heading for the low end of expectations, earning around $10M on Friday (including less than $1M from Thursday night shows) according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  Although exit polls are far from infallible, family movies usually score well, and its B grade is a sign that word-of-mouth may be […]

  The last time Halloween fell on a Saturday, in 2009, Hollywood mostly stayed away.  (The concert movie This Is It opened the previous Wednesday.)  This year, two studios tried to counterprogram the holiday with problematic star vehicles, and based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, the results weren’t pretty. BURNT (Weinstein) has been conspicuous for […]