OPENINGS:  THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (Paramount/Red Granite) fell behind American Hustle on Friday, dropping 6% to $6.3M, but considering that it’s a polarizing, 3-hour, hard-R saga that people aren’t even sure whether to call a black comedy or a drama, that’s still a fine result, and the film is likely to earn $50M+ […]

International box office for 2013 releases through January 19, 2014. Click here for a summary of worldwide performance by studio. We will start tracking the 2014 films in a few weeks.

International box office for 2013 releases through February 16, 2014.  Frozen continues to do very well here and around the world, closing to a few steps behind Despicable Me 2.  The other big mover overseas continues to be The Wolf of Wall Street, soon to break into the top 20 for films released in 2013. Click here for a […]

  DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate), in case you hadn’t heard, is purportedly The Next Big YA Thing.  It’s off to a $4.9M start in Thursday night shows that began at 8PM, and that’s a solid but–for this genre–unimpressive number.  YA movies, especially those aimed at young women audiences, are notoriously frontloaded, and back in November 2008, the […]

  The hunger for religious-themed movies hasn’t been dissipated at all by the recent Son of God, God’s Not Dead and Noah, as HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TriStar/Sony) had a very healthy $3.7M start on Wednesday at 2417 theatres despite indifferent reviews (50% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), edging out CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (Disney) […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #19 of 2014 looks like $127 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 10% from the norm for this weekend (somewhat better than we expected due to the impressive strength of Neighbors).   Opening at 3,279 theaters, Neighbors from Universal grossed $19.6 million Friday, putting the film on track for a $49.7 […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  The release of Maleficent has put Disney in a virtual three-way tie for second place (with Warner Brothers and Sony), each with around $1.35 billion worldwide for 2014 to date.  Fox remains comfortably in first place with $1.7 billion.  The other studios remain out of the running, particularly Universal, which was not helped at […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #26 of 2014 looks like $172 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, 9% below the norm for this weekend and 6% below the same weekend last year as the lackluster summer 2014 rolls on.   Opening at 4,233 theaters, Transformers: Age of Extinction from Paramount grossed $41.1 million through Friday […]