OPENINGS:  UNCHARTED (Columbia/Sony) had a strong start with $44.2M ($51M with the holiday Monday), once again largely due to the M18-34 demo, but also suggesting that Tom Holland may be emerging as an action star even without webs to spin.  (Of course it didn’t hurt that Uncharted followed his mega-smash Spider-Man so closely that […]

  Hollywood offered slim competition to the second weekend of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 2 (Marvel/Disney) and the latest comic book spectacular will easily win the weekend with what Deadline currently estimates will be $60M.  That’s a 59% drop from last weekend, steeper than the 55% for the first Guardians, even though Vol 2 […]

  OPENINGS:  NAPOLEON (Apple/Sony) launched at the higher end of expectations, with $20.4M over the 3-day weekend and $32.5M for the 5-day holiday.  As with Apple’s Killers of the Flower Moon, however, that leaves it a long way from any hope of breakeven on roughly $300M in production/marketing costs (particularly considering that audience polling indicated […]

  OPENINGS:  Although TOP GUN: MAVERICK (Paramount) is a 36-years-later sequel, the franchise that it really represents is Tom Cruise unto himself.  The last true Hollywood megastar brought in a massive audience that was mostly older men and between the coasts, to the tune of $124M for the 3-day weekend and $151M including Monday, making […]

The 2014 holiday box office continues to be good but not great. The top 10 films on Wednesday December 31, 2014 totaled $33.3 million, somewhat below the average $35.4 million for the days since 2002 when this date landed on a weekday.  The last time December 31 fell on a Wednesday (2008), the day’s top […]

  OPENINGS:  The spectacular success of SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME (Marvel/Columbia/Sony) may have less to say about the box office overall than some would like to think.  No Way Home vaporized all pandemic-era records with a $253M weekend that was 2.8x the previous Covid high ($90M for Venom: Let There Be Carnage), becoming the #1 […]

  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 […]

  December 24, along with December 31, will be the lowest box office days of the holiday season, because so many people have non-movie plans those nights.  Nevertheless, INTO THE WOODS (Disney) had a highly promising start with screenings that began at 7PM on Christmas Eve, earning $1.1M.  (That compares with the $325K that Annie […]