Strong Saturdays for both GONE GIRL (20th) and ANNABELLE (New Line/Warners) suggest that no matter who claims victory on Sunday morning, we may not really know who’s won the weekend until final numbers are available the next day.  According to preliminary box office figures at Deadline, Gone Girl climbed about 15% on Saturday to $15.3M, […]

  Seth MacFarlane’s moment, it seems, has passed.  The three years that followed the triumphant opening of the original Ted included his missteps as Oscars host and as live action star of A Million Ways to Die In the West, and it seems to have taken its toll on TED 2 (MRC/Universal), which according to […]

> Paranormal Activity 3 is THE story at the nation’s theaters this weekend.  An opening weekend of almost $52 million (with almost $26 million in the bank Friday), blasting past Paranormal Activity 2’s $41 million opening weekend this time last year.  And yet the weekend overall is down from last year.  Blame two incredibly lame […]

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between August 20 and August 26 grossed a fairly typical $146 million, down 1% from the four-year average for the comparable week and up 6% from the same week in 2011. Year to date (now over $7 billion for wide-release films) continues […]

> Friday’s preliminary boxoffice, according to the Hollywood Reporter, has the looks of another soft weekend for the major studios.  TOWER HEIST appears to be underperforming, and with a reported $9.5M Friday, may only reach $27M for the weekend.  Since Universal is mostly sitting out the holiday movie season, this would be a disappointing end […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #23 of 2015 looks like $132 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down significantly from the norm for this weekend as the lame summer continues.   Opening at 3,711 theaters Friday, Spy from Fox is on track for a $32.0 million opening three-day weekend (somewhat below our $39.5 million ShowBuzzDaily forecast earlier this week). […]

  RIO 2 (20th) has leaped out to a Friday lead, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, one that it should be able to sustain for the weekend.  The Rio sequel has $11.5M on Friday, about 10% ahead of the first Rio‘s $10.3M opening day.  That film made $39.2M for the weekend, and Rio 2 […]

  This weekend is looking like a battle of the family films, with no clear victor at this point.  THE BOSS BABY (DreamWorks Animation/20th) is performing quite a bit better than expected, with preliminary numbers at Deadline giving it nearly $15M on Friday (including $1.5M from Thursday night), which should lead it to a $50M […]