Although it’s possible for a horror or action movie to make some money over Labor Day weekend, no studio opens a movie it cares about for the holiday that repels moviegoers.  This weekend’s openings won’t change that rule.  THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS (DreamWorks/Reliant/Participant/Touchstone/Disney) was probably envisioned as an awards-worthy project when it was originally […]

The 2015 holiday box office continues its blistering pace. For the 12 days December 16-27, top 10 films in North America have totaled $783 million, +78% ahead of the same period last year, +92% above the average since 2002, and now +50% ahead of the record for this period (2009, the year of Avatar).  This is when Avatar really kicked […]

  OPENINGS:  With the addition of Saturday and overseas numbers, SOLO (Lucasfilm/Disney) is starting to shift from a disappointment to a potential disaster.  In the US, Solo fell 30% on Saturday (by comparison, last year’s Memorial Day opening Pirates of the Caribbean 5, a movie no one particularly loved, dropped only 14% on its Saturday, […]

  OPENINGS:  This year’s Saturday night Valentine’s Day worked out well for everyone this weekend, but especially for FIFTY SHADES OF GREY (Universal/Focus).  The prospect of some kink refreshed the movie’s audience from Friday’s fan-girls to a horde of couples, and the result was that despite the huge $30.3M opening day, the box office went […]

  All this summer’s box office needed for burial was a shovel, and Hollywood provided that with a Labor Day line-up devoid of any genuinely wide new releases.  The result is going to be ugly, except for a few hardy holdovers. The widest release of the weekend isn’t new at all:  it’s the one-week 901-theatre […]

  OPENINGS:  It wasn’t so much that THE BYE BYE MAN (STX) overperformed at $13.4M for the 3-day weekend (that number should rise to $15M on Monday thanks to the Martin Luther King Day holiday), but that everything around it flopped, clearing the way for it to be the #1 new title at the box […]

  As was the case last Sunday, the weekend holiday has meant that estimates for New Year’s Day (which are all over the place, from 5% down to 40% up) are no more than speculative, and there are only fragmentary international numbers.  Here’s where things stand currently:   ROGUE ONE (Lucasfilm/Disney) is reporting holiday numbers […]

  OPENINGS:  THE MARKSMAN (Open Road) allows Liam Neeson to lay claim to being the most prolific movie star of the pandemic, following on the releases of Honest Thief and the smaller-scale Made In Italy.  Despite a holiday weekend opening, Marksman‘s 3-day $3.2M start is below the $4.1M for Honest Thief, with a 4-day total […]