Last year’s Thanksgiving weekend was the biggest ever, thanks to the combo of Catching Fire and Frozen, and while plenty of tickets were sold over the past few days, this year didn’t come close. OPENINGS:  THE PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR (DreamWorks Animation/20th) was yet another piece of disappointing product for DreamWorks, which really needed to […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD. Scroll down for domestic and overseas grosses for each film individually so far in 2014. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2014 is now running -6% behind last year (worse than the -5% pace the last several weeks) and -3% below the average for this point the […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #48 of 2014 looks like $156 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 14% the norm for Thanksgiving weekend ($180 million) and down 20% from the same weekend last year.  Pretty soft. Opening at 3,764 theaters, Penguins of Madagascar from Fox and DreamWorks Animation is on track for a $25.8 million opening […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #48 of 2014 looks like $148 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 18% the norm for Thanksgiving weekend ($180 million) and down 24% from the same weekend last year.  Pretty weak. Opening at 3,654 theaters, Penguins of Madagascar from Fox and DreamWorks Animation is on track for a $26.9 million opening […]

  NOTE:  UPDATED THROUGHOUT WITH STUDIO ESTIMATES Black Friday was, as always, a very bright day for movies.  The holiday weekend continues to belong to THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I (Lionsgate), which soared 118% from Thursday to a terrific $24.1M.  Even though Mockingjay continues to lag behind the previous Hunger Games installments, that’s a […]

  As is traditional, the box office for all movies aimed at young people or families slumped on Thanksgiving Day.  That kept THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I (Lionsgate) easily on top, down 24% from Wednesday to $11.1M.  That represented a better hold than the 28% Thanksgiving drop for Catching Fire, although in actual numbers […]

  On the day before Thanksgiving, the start of a 5-day rush on moviegoing, THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I (Lionsgate) behaved as it has since it opened:  on top, but considerably behind its franchise predecessors.  Mockingjay earned $14.6M on Wednesday, more than double its nearest competition.  Nevertheless, that was 30% behind the day-before-Thanksgiving $20.8M […]

Weekend #48 of 2014 is looking like $165 million for the top 12 films this weekend, down 8% from the norm for Thanksgiving weekend but down a bigger 15% from the same weekend last year (when Frozen opened its long run). Opening at over 3,600 theaters Wednesday (above the 2,886 average theater count for opening […]