Warner Bros and Peter Jackson are very, very lucky that THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG is a significantly better movie than last year’s An Unexpected Journey, which will give it strong word of mouth, because early box office indications are that audiences, burned by Journey, are initially dubious about spending 3 more hours […]

  OPENINGS:  With a dreadful $5.3M weekend, OUT OF THE FURNACE (Relativity) emerged burnt to a crisp.  The only useful thing it could do at this point is boost Christian Bale’s chance for an Oscar nomination–not for Furnace, but for American Hustle, where he’s so visually and tempermentally different than he is in Furnace that it […]

Updated worldwide box office chart for 2013 North American films.  Also, click here for a summary of worldwide performance by studio.

The year-to-date rankings are very similar to last week, with some studios showing small negative changes versus last week’s totals (as the final domestic estimates for some films have been adjusted downward).  For a complete ranking of 2013 films individually by worldwide performance click here. TOTAL NORTH AMERICAN BOX OFFICE. Looking at wide-release films in North […]

  Studio honesty is rare enough to be worth noting when it appears:  THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE (Lionsgate) could easily have juiced its Sunday estimate to claim the #2 second weekend of all time today, but instead it was content with being #4, at $74.5M  just $1.1M behind Avatar and $700K behind The Dark […]

The see-saw continues in the 2013 studio rankings.  Disney moved back into first (thanks to the domestic release of Frozen with overseas still to come) and Warner Brothers moved back into second place. Meanwhile continued strength from The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (a big increase in overseas grosses and an upgrade in the domestic forecast total) pushed Lionsgate/Summit to […]

Updated worldwide box office chart for 2013 North American films.  Also, click here for a summary of worldwide performance by studio.

Warner Brothers moved back into first place, pushing Disney back into second place in their recent tug of war.  Gravity enjoyed a nice week of overseas grosses, the bulk of the Warner Brothers gain this week.  Thor: The Dark World also generated some more overseas dollars, but not enough to allow Disney to keep pace.  Of course, […]