“It’s the weather!” studios cry when they don’t have anything e;se to say, so that’s the spin being heard throughout the land upon Wednesday’s soft opening of ROBOCOP (Sony/MGM).  The reboot managed only $2.8M at 3372 theatres, not a sign of great interest.  It’s true that there were storms in much of the country, […]

  The lack of strong new competition is certainly helping, as is the Wednesday opening that kept last Friday down a bit, but nevertheless, the Weekend 2 hold for CRAZY RICH ASIANS (SK Global/Warners) is on track to be extraordinary.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have a 4% Friday-to-Friday drop to $7M, which would give it […]

  There were no pleasant surprises for anyone at the Friday box office, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  That even included STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (Legendary/Universal), which will easily win the weekend, but which–considering the very mild competition–fell more heavily than expected from last Friday, down 65% to $8.5M.  That drop will moderate over the […]

  Everything has broken right for JOKER (BRON/Village Roadshow/DC/Warners).  Its combination of gold-standard IP with a gritty, violent, R-rated aesthetic has been largely accepted critically and earned it film festival kudos, and it’s had the benefit of controversy about its potential to stir up real-life trouble without (so far) any actual incidents that could drive […]

  MINIONS (Illumination/Universal) was expected to enfold the weekend box office in its little yellow fingers, and so it is.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline give it a $45M opening day, which appears to be the largest opening in the history of movie animation (the asterisk is because we now consider “Friday” to include Thursday night, […]

  Veterans Day isn’t considered one of the major Hollywood holidays, but this year it provided some 3-day weekends that boosted Friday numbers (although that may catch up with some totals over the weekend and when next week is compared to it). The other note for the weekend is that all three of the major […]

  Considering the almost laughably low level of the competition it faced, THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS (Universal) didn’t hold up well on its 2d Friday.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have the day at $11.4M, down 75% from last week’s opening day.  That’s worse than the 72% Friday-to-Friday drop for Furious 7 (which was coming […]

  DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate), in case you hadn’t heard, is purportedly The Next Big YA Thing.  It’s off to a $4.9M start in Thursday night shows that began at 8PM, and that’s a solid but–for this genre–unimpressive number.  YA movies, especially those aimed at young women audiences, are notoriously frontloaded, and back in November 2008, the […]