OPENINGS:  Box office expectations were high for THE SUPER MARIO BROS MOVIE (Nintendo/Illumination/Universal), but the video game adaptation blew past them with a record-smashing $204.6M 5-day opening (passing the $200.1M for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) that was huge in all quadrants.  Even though Friday was its 3rd day of release, the 3-day weekend […]

  OPENINGS:  The traditional horror movie start of the new year was provided by NIGHT SWIM (Blumhouse-Atomic Planet/Universal), although at $12M it was the lowest such arrival since The Grudge started with $11.4M in 2020.  The final number for that one was $21.2M, and Night Swim probably won’t be much higher.  The international launch was […]

OPENINGS:  TERRIFIER 3 (Cineverse) broke through to a mainstream audience with an $18.3M weekend, which is more than the entire $10.6M run of 2022’s Terrifier 2 (that one’s highest weekend was $1.9M).  The new entry in the unrated, ultra-violent slasher series accomplished this with not just a low production budget, but reportedly a miniscule amount […]

>Surging to the top of the worldwide box office chart, The Adventures of Tintin from Steven Speilberg has racked up $125 million overseas in two weeks.  The animated film (with the unorthodox but highly successful pattern of opening overseas well before it does in North America) has a shot at well over $300 million worldwide […]

Updated tracking of overseas box office.  Taken 2 is really starting to pick up steam overseas (up $65 million overseas since last week’s report), while Argo and Sinister open this weekend in the middle of the worldwide pack (with limited overseas prospects).  

  OPENINGS:  After a painful post-Hobbit winter, Warners was in dire need of a hit, and Jackie Robinson became its great American hero, as 24 (Warners) had a very strong $9.1M opening day.  Word of mouth should be on the movie’s side–the challenge for the studio was to get people into the theaters in the […]

  Last week we ran through all the major Hollywood studios–Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox and Universal–to see how their summers have been going.  Today we’ll take a look at Lionsgate, which is generally considered a “mini-major,” a studio that doesn’t release films with the volume or budget of the majors, but […]

  OPENINGS:  Stop me if you’ve heard this before:  an expensive action-adventure will need to overperform internationally in order to get past its red ink.  With Thor 2 opening in just a week, ENDER’S GAME (Summit/Lionsgate) had a very narrow window to make an impression, and its $9.9M Friday, probably meaning a weekend in the […]