> Channing Tatum has his second big hit in just over a month.  According to Deadline’s preliminary numbers, 21 JUMP STREET (Sony) had a very solid $13M Friday, which should mean a weekend around $32-35M.  That puts the moderately-budgeted R-rated comedy well on the way to profit, and the positive reviews suggest word-of-mouth should be […]

> Well, there’s something you don’t see every day:  2 studios both content to forego bragging rights for the Sunday weekend estimates and wait for actual numbers on Monday, when public attention is lower. (Note:  The Hot Blog, which calculates its own numbers, has COWBOYS & ALIENS up by $100K.)  The important thing to remember […]

    So that happened. THE AVENGERS:  Whenever a Sunday estimate just barely crosses a milestone threshold, it’s subject to adjustment on Monday, but whether the final number turns out to be $196M or $202M is a matter for headline writers–in any case, anything in the neighborhood of the $200.3M estimate is staggering, not to […]

  ANCHORMAN 2: THE LEGEND CONTINUES (Paramount) took in another $5.1M on Thursday, down a fairly standard 37% from its Wednesday opening (This Is the End dropped 43% on its first Thursday, while We’re the Millers fell 31%).  With $13.2M in the bank, he studio is predicting $30M over the Fri-Sun weekend, although $25-27M may […]

With Saturday’s grosses now tallied, Weekend #4 of 2013 is looking like $88 million for the top 12 films (up significantly from the $80 million estimate yesterday but still down 13% from the comparable weekend average).   Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters now looks like a $19 million opening weekend, up from the $16 million estimate […]

  OPENINGS:  The $9M start for THE MENU (Searchlight/Disney) was below the $10.1M launch of Barbarian–and The Menu cost about $20M more to produce.  Combine that with the fact that The Menu is really more of a very dark satire than a horror movie, and its prospects look questionable.  The film also opened in 36 […]

> Now that THE HELP has opened about as well as Dreamworks/Disney could have hoped, the next goal is a 2d weekend decline of around 40%.  That would match the hold of Julie & Julia, and would make a $100M gross for Help very realistic.  The film’s only direct competition next weekend is the seemingly […]

  OPENINGS:  INCREDIBLES 2 (Pixar/Disney) resoundingly became the highest-opening animated film of all time with a giant $180M weekend, more than 30% higher than the $135.1M for Finding Dory.  Its Saturday behaved similarly to Dory, down 18% from Friday compared to Dory‘s 17%, although Incredibles 2 is looking for a better Sunday hold, down 16% […]