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 […]

The 2014 holiday box office continues to be better than average but now falling behind last year’s pace. The top 10 films on Monday December 29, 2014 totaled $34.9 million, somewhat below the average $39.8 million for the days since 2002 when December 29 landed on a weekday.  The last time December 29 fell on […]

  There were no new openings for New Year’s weekend, and not much in the way of surprises among the returning titles.  ROGUE ONE (Lucasfilm/Disney) continued its ride through the holidays with $18.1M on Friday according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  That’s up about 8% from Thursday, and business should go down on New Year’s […]

  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 […]

  OPENINGS:  Labor Day weekend is traditionally Hollywood’s graveyard, and no major studio touched the holiday with a fresh arrival.  DON’T LET GO (Blumhouse Tilt/OTL) tried to take advantage of the quiet, with a $2.4M start in 922 theatres, which should go to $3M with Monday.  Even considering its very low production/marketing budget, this will probably end […]

For the 16 days December 16-31, the top 10 films each day in North America have totaled $871 million, now virtually even with last year’s pace and now -12% 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:  As we noted on Friday, the 3-day weekend studio estimates are lower than they’d otherwise be, due to lower pre-holiday moviegoing on Saturday and especially Sunday.  That will all change on Christmas Day, which will usher in the biggest 8 days of the box office year. JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (Columbia/Sony) is […]

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 […]