OPENINGS:  It’s official:  THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I (Lionsgate) opened to $123M in the US, down 20% from the first Hunger Games and down 23% from Catching Fire.  That’s still the #1 opening of the year by 23% (beating Transformers: Age of Extinction), and the 15th biggest opening ever, but there’s no way […]

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 still running -5% behind last year and -3% below the average for this point the past four years ($8.653 billion).  Over the same period, […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #47 of 2014 now looks like $187 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down from yesterday’s estimate ($194 million) and now basically even with the norm for this weekend ($186 million) and down a sizable -14% from the same weekend last year. Opening at 4,151 theaters, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay […]

  THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I (Lionsgate) stabilized on Saturday, according to preliminary box office figures at Deadline.  The Day 2 drop was 23%, slightly better than the 25-26% Saturday drops for The Hunger Games and Catching Fire.  However, at $42.1M, Mockingjay‘s Saturday was still considerably below the $50.4M/$52.6M of its predecessors, and it’s […]

  OPENINGS:  Congratulations and condolences to THE HUNGER GAMES:  MOCKINGJAY PART 1 (Lionsgate), which had the biggest day of any movie this year–yet at $55M (slightly higher than Friday afternoon estimates had projected) was a surprising disappointment.  That number was well behind the $67.3M for the first Hunger Games and the $71M for Catching Fire, a […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #47 of 2014 looks like $194 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up a small 4% the norm for this weekend ($186 million) but down a significant -11% from the same weekend last year. Opening at 4,151 theaters, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 from Lionsgate/Summit grossed $56.5 million late Thursday and […]

    FRIDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE:  Both Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are reporting, based on Friday afternoon sales, that MOCKINGJAY is going to substantially underperform THE HUNGER GAMES and CATCHING FIRE for the day, and therefore for the weekend, to an extent that goes far beyond the fact that unlike the others in the series, […]

  We’re just a few hours away from the launch of THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I (Lionsgate) in over 4000 US theatres, not to mention 85 overseas territories (basically worldwide, with the exceptions of China–where the opening was originally scheduled for this week but abruptly pushed to 2015–Japan and India).  There’s very little question […]