The MCU continues to be America’s uber-franchise, as SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME (Columbia/Sony) became the first summer mega-movie in several weeks to fully live up to expectations.  Few films have opened on the Tuesday before a Thursday July 4th, so comparisons aren’t exact, but Far From Home earned $91.5M on its Tuesday-Thursday (The Amazing […]

  MALEFICENT (Disney) made it clear very quickly that it’s not going to play strictly as a family movie, earning a strong $4.2M in Thursday night screenings that began at 7PM.  That’s better than the Thursday night business for Alice in Wonderland ($3.9M) and Oz: The Great and Powerful ($2M), and more than half the […]

  The last time Halloween fell on a Saturday, in 2009, Hollywood mostly stayed away.  (The concert movie This Is It opened the previous Wednesday.)  This year, two studios tried to counterprogram the holiday with problematic star vehicles, and based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, the results weren’t pretty. BURNT (Weinstein) has been conspicuous for […]

  As will be noted endlessly by the studio and its mouthpieces all weekend, KUNG FU PANDA 3 (DreamWorks Animation/20th) is the first in the series to open in January, after June and May openings for the previous chapters.  Nevertheless, DWA and 20th didn’t choose that day with the idea of earning less, and the […]

  From the start, THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN (DreamWorks/Reliance/Universal) was perceived as a lower-intensity version of the Gone Girl phenomenon, and that’s holding with the opening of its film version.  Where Gone Girl had a $13.2M Friday start on its way to a $37.5M weekend, preliminary numbers at Deadline give Train $9.3M on Friday, […]

  OPENINGS:  PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES (Disney) easily took the weekend worldwide, but it’s another diminishing franchise.  In the US, it had a $62.2M 3-day opening, and although Memorial Day will push that to around $76M, on a 3-day-to-3-day basis, it’s down 30% from 2011’s On Stranger Tides (it’s likely […]

  After last weekend’s misfired The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, THE GRINCH (Illumination/Universal) is kicking off the family holiday movie season in a bigger way.  Early numbers at Deadline have opening day at $18.3M (including $2.2M from Thursday night), which should mean a $64M weekend, plus more on Monday, since many schools are closed […]

  On the day before Thanksgiving, the start of a 5-day rush on moviegoing, THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I (Lionsgate) behaved as it has since it opened:  on top, but considerably behind its franchise predecessors.  Mockingjay earned $14.6M on Wednesday, more than double its nearest competition.  Nevertheless, that was 30% behind the day-before-Thanksgiving $20.8M […]