Updated international box office chart below.  The Hobbit (+$97 million overseas since last week) and Life of Pi (+$82 million) are the big movers this week. New entrants to the chart include The Impossible at #31, Texas Chainsaw at #41, and Promised Land at #65.  With significant (and growing overseas business) the Spanish-produced Impossible is the one film in this week’s crop that can move up […]

  OPENINGS:  OCEAN’S EIGHT (Village Roadshow/Warners) had a $41.5M weekend, the highest of the Ocean’s movies by a bit (not adjusting for inflation).  The only point of concern is that it’s the first Ocean’s movie to drop on Saturday (by 4%, where the others had risen 6-17%), although that may only reflect the fact that […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Universal remains a dominant #1, growing even more this week.  Unfriended helped a little with its domestic opening, but the big reason for the weekly again this week was Furious 7 which is exploding overseas.  As for the other openers this weekend, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 does not significantly improve Sony’s fortunes, nor does Monkey Kingdom for Disney. […]

Oz the Great and Powerful had a very good week overseas, up $67 million to $137 million foreign to date and almost $400 million total projected worldwide.  It should approach $600 million worldwide, ending up at around #5 on our chart. The other significant gainer this past week was A Good Day to Die Hard, up $23 […]

  OPENINGS:  NIGHT SCHOOL (Perfect World/Universal) had a surprising 18% Saturday bump (by comparison, both Central Intelligence and Girls Trip dropped 4% on their first Saturdays), suggesting that it’s appealing to a family audience.  That pushed the weekend to $28M, still not in the top rank of Kevin Hart openings ($34-35M for Get Hard, Ride […]

  OPENINGS:  Every time a Christian movie sells some tickets, the pundits treat it as though they’ve seen… well, a miracle.  But at this point there have been plenty of these “miracles,” and people should just accept that the films fill a sizable niche.  (And that because of their narrow-yet-intense audience, they’re nearly always underestimated […]

>Debuting at #21 (just off the chart below), Rise of the Planet of the Apes has a projected total domestic gross of $155 million and an overseas gross to date of $23 million, as it opens slowly around the world.  But that overseas number will pick up and probably go to $200-250 million, putting Rise […]

  OPENINGS:  KONG: SKULL ISLAND (Legendary/Tencent/Warners) is playing as a quasi-family movie, perhaps in response to the R-rated Logan and Get Out.  That gave it a much more muscular Saturday than similar big-budget monster movies, up 19% on Saturday where Godzilla fell 16% and Pacific Rim dropped 13%.  With that boost, Kong should hit its […]