Bridesmaids and Priest to open at decent levels, but Thor will continue to lead the box office this weekend.  Fast Five will continue to hang around the Top 3. Opening at over 2,700 theaters, Bridesmaids should average a decent $7,300 per theater (for almost $20 million total).  Priest should average $6,100 at around 2,800 theaters […]

  OPENINGS:  While not an outright flop like The Lone Ranger, Pacific Rim, RIPD, et. al (particularly since it cost less to produce than any of those), THE WOLVERINE (20th) is underperforming in a big way.  Its estimated $21M Thursday night/Friday is the lowest start for any X-Men branded movie since the original 13 years […]

  OPENINGS:  LEAGUE OF SUPER-PETS (DC/Warners) arrived with a blah $23M, given its franchise-adjacent pedigree and starry voice cast, and it wasn’t very animated overseas either, with $18.4M in 63 markets.  It faces almost no competition for family audiences through the rest of the summer, which may help it stretch its run by enough to […]

>Through Sunday, Team Metcalf has a $52 million lead in the ShowBuzzDaily Summer Movie Draft.  Metcalf’s Captain America outpaced Salem’s Harry Potter weekend two, and Salem’s Friends with Benefits opening was cancelled out by Metcalf’s Transformers and Horrible Bosses.  Next weekend Metcalf’s final two films open.  Salem has three films in August, which collectively should […]

  We’re just a few hours away from the launch of THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I (Lionsgate) in over 4000 US theatres, not to mention 85 overseas territories (basically worldwide, with the exceptions of China–where the opening was originally scheduled for this week but abruptly pushed to 2015–Japan and India).  There’s very little question […]

  OPENINGS:  Kevin Hart has been hanging around the edges of being a movie star for a few years now, and RIDE ALONG (Universal) makes it official.  With a $14.5M Friday start, it could challenge Cloverfield for the Martin Luther King weekend title, currently at $46.1M.  For Universal, this is the start of a nicely […]

  Neither THE HEAT (20th) nor WHITE HOUSE DOWN (Sony) is expected to turn many heads at the box office this weekend (Mitch Metcalf’s predictions are here), and that was reflected in their early Thursday night and midnight Friday results.  White House, which started its screenings at 7PM, earned $1.35M, while The Heat, which waited until […]

  Note:  because last Friday was part of a holiday weekend, the week-to-week declines for holdovers are unusually heavy.  That will modify over the course of the weekend, since the holiday box office was already tailing off by last Friday. TAKEN 3 (Europa/20th) had no problem taking over the box office reins from the holiday […]