OPENINGS:  Despite a launch scheduled around Mother’s Day, BOOK CLUB: THE NEXT CHAPTER (Focus/Universal) had a soft start with $6.5M.  That’s less than half the $13.6M for the first Book Club in 2018, and also considerably below the $12.7M for this year’s 80 For Brady.  (The grasp for a closer comp with The Second […]

  OPENINGS:  The major studios abandoned this normally prime summer-season weekend, and a flood of indies rushed in to grab the available theaters.  None were able to capitalize to a particularly notable extent, with the anime HAIKYUU: THE DUMPSTER BATTLE (Crunchyroll/Sony) faring best at $3.5M.  The genre is typically very frontloaded, so Haikyuu may not […]

>The Smurfs continue to print money overseas — now only $26 million from passing Cars 2 in worldwide box office revenue.  Dolphin Tale (#54) and Moneyball (#56) are currently not on the chart and have no overseas money to date.  Dolphin Tale will certainly be more exportable than Moneyball — the baseball theme will just […]

Marvel’s The Avengers (distributed by Disney) increased again to $723 million to date overseas (up from $629 million last week), although the growth rate is starting to slow.  United Kingdom continues to lead the way overseas ($64.7 million so far now — up from $48.2 million this time last week).  Mexico remains the second-biggest territory ($50.3 million […]

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 enters the worldwide chart with $200 million overseas to date.  Ultimately, we expect the overseas number to rise to about $425 million, putting the final Twilight on track for $710 million ( a touch ahead of New Moon as the highest Twilight worldwide gross).  For a complete track of worldwide/ domestic/ overseas […]

  You might think we’re still a week away from the beginning of the summer movie season, but if you were overseas, you’d be wrong.  IRON MAN 3 (Disney) has already started its run in a dozen foreign territories, and by this weekend will be playing in 80% of the world (with China, as well […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. Warner Brothers has moved past Universal to take the #2 spot on the worldwide box office chart for 2013.  The opening of We’re the Millers and continued overseas strength from Pacific Rim and to a lesser extent The Conjuring powered Warner Brothers to the best week of the studios. Reminder: the chart below has been reformatted and expanded […]

With the release of Thor: The Dark World Disney has reclaimed second place in the worldwide box office race, pushing Universal to third and moving to within $100 million of Warner Brothers.  Still a lot of overseas upside for the second installment of Thor so Disney should be back at #1 in the next week or two.   TOTAL […]