OPENINGS:  The production budget for 2 GUNS (Universal) was funded by producers Emmett/Furla and Foresight Entertainment, with Universal just on the hook for marketing and distribution.  In addition, the overseas distribution is being handled by other studios.  All of this limits Universal’s risk and also its upside, and since the movie had a $10M […]

  OPENINGS:  THE GRINCH (Illumination/Universal) rode its family movie 47% Saturday bump to a $66M weekend, 20% better than 2000’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  There are relatively few recent mid-November family movie releases, because Disney has established its ownership of the Thanksgiving corridor that starts less than 2 weeks later (this year’s installment is […]

  Its studio did everything in its corporate power to keep the quality of TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (Huahua/Paramount) from infecting ticket sales, preventing any reviews from appearing until the projectors had started on the movie’s first paid screenings.  But audiences knew what was coming, and in the US, Transformers 5 will be by far […]

>Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), the total box office for this weekend is now looking like only $100 million, down 24% from last year.  Projected weekend grosses for each film (summarized after the jump) are generally lower than originally forecast yesterday.  After Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, nothing is […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is now -5% below last year’s comparable span (2 points better than last week) and now +2% above the average at this point the past four years ($4.304 billion).  Over the […]

  OPENINGS:  ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (Imperative/TriStar/Sony) opened on Monday to an indifferent public that didn’t care about Kevin Spacey being replaced with Christopher Plummer, and nothing has changed over the course of the holiday week.  Its first full weekend is estimated at $5.5M, which should become $7.5M with Monday included, and it’s […]

>Another very slow week at the nation’s movie theaters, with high double-digit declines compared to similar weeks the past few years.  The year to date box office total is now down 3.8% from last year — it was -3.7% last week.  Box office should perk up as it always does between Christmas and New Year’s, […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. In the worldwide studio rankings for 2013 to date, the weekly changes look much higher than normal.  Most of those increases are a function of some September films not being fully counted in the yearly totals for the past few weeks.  All of the 2013 films are properly accounted for now. Warner Brothers […]