OPENINGS:  DESPICABLE ME 4 (Illumination/Universal) arrived at the high end of expectations with a $75M 3-day weekend and $122.6M since its July 3 opening.  That was a tad below 2013’s Despicable Me 2, which also opened on a Wednesday July 3 with $83.5M/$143.1M.  Despicable 4 should pass $300M in the US, which would put […]

Before the two biggest days of the holiday box office season (December 25 and 26), the holiday season — or pre-season, if you will — stands at $238 million for the nine-days between December 16 and 24, now -4.1% behind the same period last year ($248 million) but still narrowly above (+1.7%) the average for […]

For the 13 days December 16-28, top 10 films in North America have totaled $831 million, now +71% ahead of the same period last year, +83% above the average since 2002, and +44% ahead of the previous record for this period (2009, the year of Avatar).  Each of the comparisons are down five to ten percentage […]

  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 […]

  The MCU continues to be America’s uber-franchise, as SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME (Columbia/Sony) became the first summer mega-movie in several weeks to fully live up to expectations.  Few films have opened on the Tuesday before a Thursday July 4th, so comparisons aren’t exact, but Far From Home earned $91.5M on its Tuesday-Thursday (The Amazing […]

  OPENINGS:  MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU (Illumination/Universal) exceeded industry expectations with a $108.5M 3-day opening.  That’s just a bit lower than the $115.7M launch for the first Minions movie, although that was an April 2015 launch that didn’t have the benefit of a holiday Sunday.  Rise of Gru is expected to hit $127.9M over […]

The 2014 holiday box office continues to be slightly better than average but slightly below last year. The top 10 films on Thursday January 1, 2015 totaled $46.3 million, somewhat above the average $44.8 million for the days since 2002 when this date landed on a weekday.  When January 1 last fell on a Thursday, […]

  Franchises are the lifeblood of Hollywood, so it has to chill studios to see three of those entries falter in a single 2-weekend period, especially since the stakes are higher for this week’s arrivals than last week’s Neighbors 2. Based on the preliminary $27M Friday number at Deadline, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (TSG/20th) is running almost […]