Madagascar 3 has ballooned to $244 million overseas to date (up from $157 million through last week).  The third Madagascar has now tied the overseas take for the first Madagascar ($244.2 million) and is now gunning for the $423.9 million overseas total for Madagascar 2. Meanwhile Snow White and the Huntsman had a nice weekly gain to $189 million overseas to date (from […]

  OPENINGS:  The limits of the pandemic-era box office, not to mention the historically lowest-grossing holiday weekend of the year, were tossed aside by the super powers of the MCU, as SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE 10 RINGS (Marvel/Disney) obliterated the previous Labor Day weekend record ($26.4M/$30.6M for the 2007 edition of Halloween) with […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is now -18% below last year’s comparable span (1 point better than last week) and now -16% below the average for this point the past four years ($2.351 billion).  Over the same […]

  OPENINGS:  The MCU-adjacent MORBIUS (Marvel/Columbia/Sony) was unable to pull off Venom‘s feat of opening big despite lousy reviews.  Its $39.1M weekend was less than half of Venom‘s $80.3M, and negative word of mouth was evident in the 24% Friday-to-Saturday drop.  It’s never a good sign when the best spin a studio can put on […]

  OPENINGS:  The only new wide release on Halloween weekend was the low-budget horror movie COME PLAY (Focus/Universal), which was relatively impressive compared to last week’s $1.3M for Empty Man with $3.2M.  It seemed to be helped by pandemic considerations, because while normally a Saturday Halloween would be a down day, this year moviegoing appeared […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.   YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2015 to date is still +6% above last year and now +3% above the average for this point the past four years ($7.438 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed over $19.9 billion worldwide when we add overseas box office (that’s […]

  OPENINGS:  THE BIKERIDERS (Regency/Focus/Universal) seized the opportunity to open on a prime summer weekend without any new tentpole releases, and the studio estimate (which assumed the strongest Sunday hold in the Top 10) was $10M, in line with expectations.  The question is how well the indie will hold up next week against new action […]

  OPENINGS:  CRAWL (Paramount) may be an example of a studio outsmarting itself.  Paramount held no critics screenings, presumably because disdain was expected, and thus was unable to create any advance buzz around a response that turned out to be remarkably enthusiastic (88% on Rotten Tomatoes).  The result was a tepid $12M opening, and since […]