GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (Marvel/Disney) had a sensational $11.2M start in Thursday night shows starting at 7PM.  That’s the biggest Thursday night result of the year, edging out Captain America: The Winter Soldier‘s $10.2M (although that had a slight handicap with its 8PM start time) and beating all of the summer’s other blockbusters.  It’s […]

  On Sunday mornings, the devout go to church, and movie studios lie.  (There’s not much overlap between the two groups.)  The studios lie (or fudge, if you’re sensitive about the L Word), fundamentally, because they can get away with it:  when “estimated” box office returns are announced on Sunday mornings, they’re simply repeated–one might […]

  A few notes:  this week’s newcomers opened along a range of dates, including Tuesday night, Wednesday, Friday night and Saturday, and those scheduling decisions had an affect on the totals below.  Also, the fact that Friday was Christmas Eve lowered the day’s ticket sales, probably by 30% or so.  (Something similar will apply to […]

  The Martin Luther King Day holiday tends to be a day off more for schoolchildren than for adult employees, meaning that at the boxoffice, it benefits family movies–of which there’s a distinct shortage right now.  For adult-oriented films, the Friday gross is often around 25-30% of the 4-day weekend total (with new openings at […]

  It won’t be #1 for the full weekend, but the story on Saturday was DJANGO UNCHAINED (Weinstein/Sony), which–according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, at least–had its second straight day of splendid growth (+17%) and is challenging THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warners/MGM) for the day’s lead with $11.2M.  It appears as though Django will […]

  Note:  due to last week’s low-grossing Super Bowl Sunday, all weekend-to-weekend comparisons appear unusually strong this week. OPENINGS:  THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE:  SPONGE OUT OF WATER (Nickelodeon/Paramount) notched the #5 February opening ever with $56M (although not quite in a league with last year’s The LEGO Movie, which was #2 with $69.1M).  The studios seem […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. In the worldwide studio rankings for 2013 to date, Sony moved ahead of Paramount (taking over 5th place) with $70 million of revenue this week (from continued overseas revenues from Mortal Instruments, White House Down and Smurfs 2).  Warner Brothers had an even better week ($76 million, mostly from overseas grosses for We’re the […]

    Don’t hold your breath for Men In Black 4.   OPENINGS:  The US 3-day weekend numbers on MEN IN BLACK 3 (Sony) are in accord with last night’s lackluster preliminary estimate of $55M.  Sony is predicting $70M for the full holiday weekend, which may be a stretch, as it would allow for only […]