Hollywood doesn’t typically open strong titles on Oscar weekend, when moviegoing is likely to fall sharply on Sunday.  So although the superfans and curiosity-seekers have already had their fill, and 50 SHADES OF GREY (Universal/Focus) wasted no time in diving from last week’s remarkable heights, the kinky romance is having no trouble with this […]

>Adventures of Tintin continues to roll around the world and is up to $159 million overseas, already what we expect it to do domestically when it opens here in December.  Real Steel is now up to almost $150 million overseas, as is Johnny English Reborn.  Puss in Boots has jumped up to $48 million overseas […]

  A lot of product made for a decent weekend total, but none of the new films fared particularly well. OPENINGS:  THE EXPENDABLES 2 (Lionsgate) opened 20% behind its predecessor, when sequels usually open bigger (and then run out of steam faster) than the earlier films.  It’s likely to make only $75-80M in the US, and […]

  OPENINGS:  INSIDE OUT 2 (Pixar/Disney) overdelivered massively compared to expectations with $155M in the US, a remarkable $65M higher than the start for 2015’s original Inside Out, and depending whether you count the “live-action” CG remake of The Lion King ($191.8M) as animated, either the #2 or #3 US opening for an animated feature […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.   YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2015 to date is now +4% above last year and still +2% above the average for this point the past four years ($8.361 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed $22.6 billion worldwide when we add overseas box office (that’s still +6% […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #27 of 2014 looks like $118 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, even worse than the $126 million estimate yesterday, now 31% below the norm for this weekend, and well below the $153.2 million weekend for the top 12 the last time July 4 fell on a […]

The 46th weekend of the year is looking like $115 million for the top 12 films, around 50% below this weekend the last few years.  Usually this weekend is a big warm-up to the long Thanksgiving weekend the following week, but this year Thanksgiving falls later than normal on the calendar relatively speaking, leaving this […]

  After years in the wilderness, M. Night Shyamalan returned to profitability with last year’s The Visit, and based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, SPLIT (Blumhouse/Universal) will build on that success.  Opening day was $13.5M (including $2M from Thursday night), far ahead of Visit‘s $9.2M, and the weekend could be as high as $35M, a […]