OPENINGS:  We had a new wide release this weekend, and THE WAR WITH GRANDPA (101) managed a win over the weary Tenet with $3.6M.  That’s certainly not a number that would make anyone feel good in non-pandemic times, and since War With Grandpa had a semblance of a national marketing campaign, it’s not at […]

  OPENINGS:  There wasn’t any good news for this week’s wide releases, and that began with the weekend’s leader, as THE FLASH (DC/Warners) failed to meet even the lowest expectations with a sluggish $55.1M start.  (The studio’s 4-day estimate, including the Monday Juneteenth holiday, was an optimistic $64M.)  The 3-day total was significantly lower than […]

  Labor Day weekend is always the exhausted last gasp of the summer movie season, but this year the studios didn’t even try.  Partly it’s the effect of August having generally been a disaster in 2015 (last year’s 4-day Labor Day span featured a $22.9M 5th weekend for Guardians of the Galaxy and $15.6M from […]

  OPENINGS:  For ROGUE ONE (Lucasfilm/Disney), massive success was taken for granted, and the question was how big a standalone spin-off entry in the Star Wars canon could be.  The answer is pretty damn big:  its $155M US opening weekend is the 12th highest ever, and #3 for the year (behind $179.1M for Captain America: […]

  OPENINGS:  STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Lucasfilm/Disney) had an excellent Saturday for a blockbuster of its size, dropping 39% from Friday, where The Force Awakens had fallen 43%.  That cemented Last Jedi as the 2nd-highest opening in US history at $220M (down 11% from Force Awakens)–and that studio estimate may even be a tad […]

  The holiday box office has turned out to be AQUAMAN (DC/Warners), and then everything else.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have its 3rd Friday at $16.8M, up 15% from Thursday and down 40% from last Friday, for a likely $51M weekend, and $215M by New Year’s Day.  Comparisons to other DC releases at the same […]

  OPENINGS:  Taking the spotlight from higher-profile arrivals, the anime title MY HERO ACADEMIA: WORLD HEROES’ MISSION (Funimation) was the weekend’s highest-grossing newcomer with $6.4M, better than the $5.9M opening for the last Academia movie, 2019’s Heroes Rising.  These films tend to be fairly front-loaded, but Mission should pass $15M in the US, and it […]

  Official studio estimates are in for New Year’s Weekend in the US, but overseas numbers are still sketchy.  A few notes: ROGUE ONE (Lucasfilm/Disney) had a US result in keeping with preliminary numbers, up 15% on Sunday and with an anticipated 12% Monday drop.  This puts it at $439.7M domestically, 41% below The Force […]