OPENINGS:  There were no new wide openings this weekend, and with the postponement of No Time To Die until 2021, and the announcement that Regal Theaters may be re-closing some or all of its houses, it’s not clear when the major studios will be returning.  (Currently Pixar/Disney’s Soul and Universal’s The Croods 2 are […]

  OPENINGS:  MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU (Illumination/Universal) exceeded industry expectations with a $108.5M 3-day opening.  That’s just a bit lower than the $115.7M launch for the first Minions movie, although that was an April 2015 launch that didn’t have the benefit of a holiday Sunday.  Rise of Gru is expected to hit $127.9M over […]

  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 […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.   YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2015 to date is now +3% above last year and +4% above the average for this point the past four years ($4.194 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed almost $11.8 billion worldwide when we add overseas box office […]

>John Carter joins the worldwide box office chart, ranked at #13 out of 44 wide-release films over the past three months.  We are currently estimating John Carter could total $75 million in North America, but the overseas total to date is already $70 million.  If the overseas total ends up around $125 million, the film […]

  OPENINGS:  Despite a bounty of new titles, nothing touched the holdover at the top of the weekend box office.  The newcomer with the closest claim to “success” in the US was THE POPE’S EXORCIST (Screen Gems/Sony), with $9.2M.  The horror movie also reported $27.4M in overseas release, which would put it on a road […]

  OPENINGS:  GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE (Columbia/Sony) played as a family movie, with a Saturday afternoon bump, and that enabled it to match projections at $45.2M, slightly higher than the $44M start for 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife.  However, Frozen Empire cost $25M more than Afterlife, so a 3% increase at the box office may not cover the […]

  OPENINGS:  Even though THE DISASTER ARTIST (A24) was at just 840 theatres, its $6.4M weekend had no trouble topping its woeful newcomer competition.  That total (which may come down a bit in finals, because A24 tends to be optimistic in its Sunday estimates) translated into a $7700 per-theatre weekend average, notably better than the […]