OPENINGS:  In the US, ONWARD (Pixar/Disney) was merely a disappointment by Pixar standards, with an OK 37% Saturday bump that allowed it to claim a $40M weekend, pending actuals on Monday.  That isn’t much better then the $34.7M launch for last year’s Lego Movie 2, and it’s far off last March’s $55M for How […]

  OPENINGS:  ZERO DARK THIRTY (Sony) expanded to coincide with its Oscar nominations, and the strategy worked as planned, with the acclaimed (and, in some circles, attacked) drama easily carrying Friday with $9M, on its way to $25-27M for the weekend. It’s a massive embarrassment for GANGSTER SQUAD (Warners) that it was beaten by the […]

  OPENINGS:  THE POSSESSION (Lionsgate) is doing quite well for a low-budget horror quickie, with $17.7M for the 1st 3 days of the holiday weekend, and is on track to be the #2 Labor Day opening ever, behind only the 2007 remake of Halloween.  LAWLESS (Weinstein Company), though, at $9.7M, is behind last year’s The […]

Weekend #19 of 2015 is looking like $126 million for the top 12 films this weekend, somewhat below the norm for this weekend. Opening at around 2,700 theaters Friday (slightly below the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Hot Pursuit from Warner Brothers should average a somewhat above average $6,600 per theater for the three-day […]

Wreck-It-Ralph enters the worldwide chart with a modest $12 million overseas to date, but that will grow to match and probably exceed the $171 million we expect for the film domestically.  The film could end up with $350-375 million worldwide ultimately. Skyfall, which opens Friday in North America, is already up to $287 million overseas in […]

>Fast Five is even stronger after a strong Saturday.  Biggest April opening ever pushes the weekend to 55% above last year’s comparable weekend. The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates now show that Fast Five should finish its run with $183 million, ahead of Rio, which is headed for $149 million.  The other openers are DOA, with […]

  On Tuesday, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES added $17.8M to its Wayne Manor-sized vault, giving it a total of $198M in 5 days of release. It was the only movie in the Top 10 to decline yesterday, but that’s typical for the previous weekend’s big opening. It has the #5 5-day total of all time, […]

> Navy SEALs shoot up the Friday boxoffice. OPENINGS:  The very aggressive marketing for ACT OF VALOR (Relativity) made it seem like it was a patriotic duty to see the film, and successfully hid the fact that it’s mostly a sub-par B action movie.  The question now is whether its quality will catch up with […]