Based on Friday’s grosses, the first weekend of 2014 looks like $138 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up about 10% from similar weekends the past few years.   Opening at 2,867 theaters Friday, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones from Paramount grossed $6.8 million Friday, putting the fifth in the franchise on track for an $18.1 million […]

  OPENINGS:  The box office was boosted in general by Veterans Day, which gave many Americans a 3-day weekend, but ARRIVAL (FilmNation/Sony/Paramount) was still notably impressive with a $24M weekend at a mid-wide 2317 theatres.  Its word of mouth remains to be seen (it dropped 4% on Saturday), but it seems to be in good […]

>Four new films opened this weekend in North America and have joined our worldwide box office tracking chart.  Three of the four are toward the bottom of the chart and are destined to stay there.  The other film, Act of Valor, is currently in the middle of the pack but should rise as moderate overseas […]

  THE AVENGERS (Disney) just won’t slow down.  If preliminary numbers at Deadline hold, Avengers made $44.5M on Saturday, up 50% from the prior day and down only 36% from the Saturday of its opening weekend, an extraordinarily good result.  (In comparison, on The Hunger Games‘s 2d weekend, its Saturday was up only 33% from […]

  This will be the last weekend without a mega-hit on top for a while. OPENINGS:  THE OTHER WOMAN (20th) will take the weekend with around $25M after a $9.3M Friday, and the potentially better news is that Diaz’s last hit Bad Teacher was even stronger overseas than in the US (not a sure thing […]

> The 17th weekend of 2012 is looking like a poor $97 million for the Top 12 films, down 33% from this weekend last year and down 28% from the four-year average for the same weekend.  Think Like a Man should retain the top spot in its second weekend with $18 million, declining about 46% […]

Weekend #8 of 2014 is looking like an okay $110 million for the top 12 films, 4% above the average for this weekend the past several years. Two new movies look to open very quietly, while The Lego Movie remains the only real force in theaters currently. Opening at around 2,500 theaters Friday (slightly below the 2,886 average […]

  OPENINGS:  OUT OF THE FURNACE (Relativity) will do nothing to change the reputation of the first weekend in December as a terrible time to open a new movie.  Even in a more robust weekend, the grim quasi-art film, quasi-action thriller would have had a hard time (and the presence of Christian Bale didn’t help […]