As Dark Shadows followed The Avengers last year in the second weekend of May, The Great Gatsby will try to follow Iron Man 3’s huge opening last weekend.  Let’s face it, the TV spots for Gatsby make the film look like a lame costume party or some kind of high school production, and the racing […]

  Darren Aronofsky’s NOAH (Paramount) should have no trouble winning the weekend, with preliminary numbers at Deadline giving it around $15M on Friday (that includes $1.6M from Thursday night).  That’s a strong result for a film that doesn’t fit into a conventional Hollywood genre, and normally it would indicate a weekend of $40M or more, […]

  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 […]

  OPENINGS:  It was a sad lot of newcomers this holiday weekend.  TAMMY (Warners) is claiming a $21.2M weekend ($32.9M including Wed-Thurs), which will leave it struggling to get past $70M in the US.  (It also brought in $2.5M from a very small initial overseas release.)  DELIVER US FROM EVIL (Screen Gems/Sony) had a relatively […]

  OPENINGS:  CHRISTOPHER ROBIN (Disney) led the newcomers with $25M (as is always the case with studio estimates that barely exceed a round number, that may decline in finals tomorrow), 16% better than Disney’s debut of Pete’s Dragon in August 2016.  However, the films had different trajectories, with Robin down 9% on Saturday, while Dragon […]

> Well, that didn’t last long. After an Oscars+1 day where Best Picture winner THE ARTIST had the smallest Monday decline of any movie in the Top 10,  by Tuesday the glow was gone.  On a day when almost every Top 10 film was significantly up, ccording to Box Office Mojo, Artist had an increase […]

  OPENINGS:  THE BATMAN (DC/Warners) was the first event movie to open in 3 months, and the market responded with a $128.5M weekend, the 2nd-highest of the pandemic era (although not close to Spider-Man: No Way Home‘s $260.1M start).  About $4M of that number is attributable to AMC’s new “variable pricing” policy, hiking the ticket […]

The big gainers overseas this week: Brave (up $33 million, finally over the $200 million milestone overseas), Dark Knight Rises (up $31 million this week overseas), Ted (up $25 million overseas this week), Total Recall (up $22 million this week),  Ice Age: Continental Drift (up $18 million to an incredible $662 million overseas to date) and Madagascar 3 (up $17 million to $369 million […]