Everyone knew that FURIOUS 7 (MRC/Universal) was going to have an enormous weekend, but the franchise is toppling even the most optimistic forecasts.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, opening day (which includes $15.8M from Thursday night shows) could reach $68M, an amazing 75% increase over the first day of Fast & Furious 6, which […]

    FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE:  Both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are reporting, based on Friday afternoon sales, that MOCKINGJAY is going to substantially underperform THE HUNGER GAMES and CATCHING FIRE for the day, and therefore for the weekend, to an extent that goes far beyond the fact that unlike the others in the series, […]

  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 […]

  THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) launched with 7PM screenings last night and earned $8.7M, which was considerably below expectations.  Although Amazing 2 topped the opening night for the first Amazing, that one started on a Tuesday (of July 4th week), so comparisons aren’t apples-to-apples.  The more applicable comparison may be that Amazing 2 started 15% […]

  The phenomenon of It having had its day, weekend box office is starting to look more familiar, which is to say subdued.  KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE (MARV/20th) will take the weekend, but hardly in impressive fashion.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have opening day at $15.7M, which includes $3.4M from Thursday night.  2 years ago, […]

  Although some films have opened well against the Super Bowl, both counterprogramming (the Hannah Montana concert movie and Dear John) and playing toward the action genre (Taken and Chronicle), as a rule the studios stay away, and that was the case this year.  The only wide opening was the low-budget horror flick WINCHESTER (CBS/Lionsgate), […]

  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, MOANA (Disney Animation) is going to have a dominant and perhaps even historic Thanksgiving weekend.  Disney’s latest blockbuster blew past predictions with a $15.4M opening day (including $2.6M from Tuesday night).  That’s better than the $15.2M earned by Frozen (which technically was in its 2d week of release, […]

  Its studio did everything in its corporate power to keep the quality of TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (Huahua/Paramount) from infecting ticket sales, preventing any reviews from appearing until the projectors had started on the movie’s first paid screenings.  But audiences knew what was coming, and in the US, Transformers 5 will be by far […]