> A rather sleepy weekend ahead, most likely down about 15% from the same weekend last year.  No dominant openers arrive Friday, leaving the weekend Contagion’s to lose.   Opening at more than 2,400 theaters in North America by FilmDistrict, Drive should average $5,000 per theater (for $12 million for Friday-Sunday).  (All films the last two years […]

The big movers overseas this past week were Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (up $151 million to $351 million to date overseas) and Skyfall (up $61 million to $568 million overseas to date).  Updated worldwide tracks for Twilight and the completely re-energized James Bond follow.     Entering the worldwide chart this week are Rise of the Guardians (starting at […]

The weekend looks like a decent $125 million for the top 12 films, a little better than it looked yesterday (now slightly beating the multi-year average for this weekend).  Each of the three openers had good Saturday grosses and are exceeding the predictions in Wednesday’s  ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Forecast. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates for films opening wide this […]

  The $17.1M opening day (including $3.4M from Thursday night) for GHOSTBUSTERS (Columbia/Sony) reported in preliminary numbers at Deadline would be fine if the movie were at the same budget level as previous Paul Feig/Melissa McCarthy collaborations The Heat or Spy.  But Ghostbusters cost 2-3x as much, $275M+ including production and global marketing, and a […]

  THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) is headed for a strong post-4th of July weekend, according to preliminary Friday numbers at Deadline.  Spidey reportedly made $21M on Friday, which if that number holds would be a 33% increase over Thursday, signficantly better than the 18% Friday bump that Transformers had in its 4th of July week […]

> Yesterday we looked at the international box office numbers for films released in the fourth quarter of last year.  Today we turn our attention to movies released since the beginning of 2011.  Compared to the movies released October-December, the January-March crop looks a bit motley, but that is normal for this time of year. […]

> The probable effect of Irene is most evident in the weekend’s limited releases, where loss of NY business would have been most damaging.  HIGHER GROUND, seemingly headed for a per-theatre average of $12K, could only manage $7600, while CIRCUMSTANCE, on track for a $8K average, made it to only $6200.  Similarly, some expansions were […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  We will continue tracking 2015 for several more weeks as the holiday films finish their runs.  We will begin tracking the 2016 slates soon.   YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2016 to date is now even with last year and now +9% above the average for this […]