PAIN & GAIN (Paramount) may take the last weekend before the summer movie season starts, but based on the preliminary numbers at Deadline, it’s not going to win very impressively, with a $7M Thursday night/Friday that should give it a $17-19M weekend, right where Mitch Metcalf’s weekend predictions had put it.  Pain was shot on […]

>Thor opens solidly but not enough to push the weekend past Iron Man 2’s torrid pace last year. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates now show that Thor should finish its run with $190 million, while Fast Five has been upgraded to $212 million and Rio has been downgraded slightly to $138 million.  The other openers, […]

  Steady finales. DEMOGRAPHIC DETAIL: For each broadcast program (or hour segment), the chart below displays preliminary live+same day key advertiser demographics (adult 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54 ratings), audience skews (women 18-49, men 18-49 and adults 50+ shares) and total viewership (thousands of people over the age of 2). Ratings analysis and comparisons follow the chart. […]

  An oddity of this year’s box office is that while a few very big hits (American Sniper, 50 Shades of Grey, The SpongeBob Movie) have pushed the total 2015 take well above last year’s start, there have been no shortage of high-profile failures alongside them, including Mortdecai, Jupiter Ascending, Focus and Blackhat.  Add to […]

  Pixar is still Pixar, but the Disney Animation division of the studio (also headed by John Lasseter) is proving that it’s a formidable creator of animated features as well, following Frozen with the smashingly imaginative ZOOTOPIA (Disney).  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, Zootopia had a $18M Friday (including $1.7M from Thursday night), and […]

  OPENINGS:  The $40M weekend estimate for THE HEAT (20th) makes more sense than it did last night, now that the movie’s Saturday is being reported as a 6% increase rather than a 5% drop.  (But always be suspicious of round-number estimates anyway.)  The Heat is going to be profitable, thanks to its $45M production budget, […]

The 2014 holiday box office is now somewhat better than average but behind last year’s pace. The top 10 films on Tuesday December 30, 2014 totaled $38.1 million, a touch below the average $39.0 million for the days since 2002 when this date landed on a weekday.  The last time December 30 fell on a […]

Updated international box office chart: