OPENINGS:  DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (20th) brought in $73M in the US, and added $31.1M in 26 (mostly smaller) international markets.  While a terrific boost to the franchise (which rebooted at $54.8M with Rise 3 years ago), it’s still a level below the summer’s mega-franchises.  However, Dawn has weeks to play […]

  This was the weekend that the COVID-19 crisis hit the box office in earnest, and while that fact pales in importance compared to the human cost of the pandemic, it’s going to represent a multi-billion dollar hit that will reverberate through the lives of many throughout the world.  As bad as the numbers below […]

  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 -7% below last year’s comparable span (1 point worse than last week’s comparison) and still basically even with this point the past four years ($9.092 billion).  Over the […]

In the movie 42, Jackie Robinson (played by Chadwick Boseman) repeatedly asks Branch Rickey why he is breaking baseball’s unwritten whites-only rule.  Rickey (played by Harrison Ford) gives very vague, unsatisfying responses each time.  What a blown dramatic opportunity.  In Ken Burns’ nine-part documentary masterpiece “Baseball,” an aged Red Barber (the Dodgers’ radio broadcaster) describes the […]

  SNITCH (Summit/Lionsgate) held fairly well on Saturday, with a 40% bump, and as a result, the weekend race between it and IDENTITY THIEF (Universal) is currently too close to call, although preliminary numbers at Deadline have Identity Thief pulling out a narrow victory, $13.4M to $13.2M.  That result will likely hold, since those early […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #24 of 2013 looks like a really good $192 million for the top 12 films, not quite the $200+ million we forecast but still up 27% from the average for this weekend the past few years. Man of Steel is opening exactly at our expectations, while most of the holdovers […]

  By Sunday, AMERICAN SNIPER (Warners/Village Roadshow) may have one of the top 10-day wide release box office totals in history, as Clint Eastwood’s behemoth continues to lay waste to everything else in theatres.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Sniper earned $18M on Friday, down just 40% from its mammoth first day of wide […]

>Three full weeks into 2012, domestic box office is running well ahead of last year’s anemic pace but about the same as the comparable period’s average for the last several years.        The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between January 16 and January 22 grossed $180 million, […]