OPENINGS: As we noted on Friday, the 3-day weekend studio estimates are lower than they’d otherwise be, due to lower pre-holiday moviegoing on Saturday and especially Sunday. That will all change on Christmas Day, which will usher in the biggest 8 days of the box office year. JUMANJI: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE (Columbia/Sony) is […]
>The 12th weekend of the year should be a whopper: about $176 million for the top 12 films. How big is that for the fourth weekend in March? Enormous, unprecedented: up 62% from last year’s comparable weekend and up 55% from the four-year average for this weekend. Of course, this weekend is all about The […]
> It seems like only yesterday that we were reviewing the records for midnight openings (actually, it was March 23, when The Hunger Games opened with a 7th-highest $19.7M Thursday midnight–the highest ever for a non-sequel). Now we’re just a few hours away from the US arrival of THE AVENGERS, which… is it a sequel? […]
OPENINGS: INSIDIOUS CHAPTER 2 (FilmDistrict) had the year’s biggest horror start with $20.1M (including $1.5M from Thursday night). That compares to $17M for The Conjuring, the year’s biggest hit in the genre (and also from director James Wan). Insidious 2, though, is likely to be much more front-loaded, given its fairly lousy reviews and Friday the […]
With a franchise like GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL 2 (Marvel/Disney), profitability isn’t at issue. Guardians 2 carries around $350M in worldwide production/marketing costs, and it will be in hailing distance of financial success by Sunday. The question is how the given installment ranks in terms of similar mega-competition and expectations. Preliminary numbers at […]
NOTE: THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED THROUGHOUT TO REFLECT OFFICIAL STUDIO ESTIMATES FOR THURSDAY. As is customary during Christmas-New Year’s week, the majority of the holiday movies stayed fairly stable on Thursday, varying only a few hundred thousand dollars from the day before. The major exception, based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, was LES […]
> Studios exaggerate the gross of Rio and Scre4m (shocking!). Specialty films The Conspirator and Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 open to average results. The past week is up versus 2010 — the slump is not over but progress was made. Compared to the Sunday Studio Estimates (which combine actual numbers for Friday and Saturday with a studio-supplied estimate […]
RIO 2 (20th/Blue Sky) appears to be losing altitude, according to preliminary box office numbers at Deadline. The sequel reportedly climbed 30-34% on its second day of release, from $11.9M on Friday to $16M or less. That would be a big drop from the 69% bump the first Rio had on its initial Saturday […]