Team Salem’s top pick (Pixar’s Brave) opened this weekend, helping increase the slate to $290 million, up almost $97 million from last week.  Meanwhile, continued strong business from Madagascar 3 and a few others pushed Team Metcalf’s almost-fully-release slate up a similar amount over the last week (up $95 million) to $1.17 billion.   Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter pushed […]

Marvel’s The Avengers (distributed by Disney) has jumped to $441.5 million to date overseas (up from $178.4 million last week, when it opened ahead of Friday’s North American debut).  United Kingdom ($25.7 million so far) and Australia ($20.2 million) lead the international charge so far, although there are also impressive results from Mexico ($17.4 million), South Korea […]

  THE HOBBIT:  THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES (New Line/MGM/Warners) opened on Wednesday to $24.5M, which is both the 12th-highest opening Wednesday ever (and 3rd-highest in December) and the lowest opening day for a Peter Jackson Tolkien adaptation since The Fellowship of the Ring ($18.2M) back in 2001.  The Armies start was below the Wednesday […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Updated look at 2016 by studio, with Fox continuing to dominate but Disney now in the game with Zootopia.  Note: We have amended the summary categories somewhat this year with the top category now reserved for films over $500 million worldwide and the lower category for films under $150 million worldwide.   YEAR TO […]

  Based on preliminary Saturday numbers at Deadline, adjustments from the morning’s weekend estimates will be minimal, although mostly in the wrong direction.  GOOSEBUMPS (Columbia/Sony) increased 31% from Friday to Saturday, a modest result for a family movie (Hotel Transylvania 2 jumped 56% on its 2d day of release), giving it a 2-day total of […]

  This was never going to be much of a box office weekend, and the east coast snowstorms certainly won’t help.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, all 3 of the newcomers are closely packed with $3.5-4M Fridays and probable $9.5-11M weekends, so word of mouth could put any of them ahead. The early leader, […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2018 film slates by studio. The studio totals also include 2018 dollars for films released in late 2017. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2018 to date is now +10% above last year and now +11% above the average for this point […]

  OPENINGS:  WONKA (Warners) kicked off the holiday movie season with $39M, at the upper end of expectations.  As a family entertainment, it can look forward to a high multiple into January, and could reach $200M+ in the US, against around $250M in production/marketing costs.  The IP musical is even stronger overseas, where it expanded […]