Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #28 of 2014 looks like $134 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, 30% below the norm for this weekend and very close to our forecast ($135 million). Opening at 3,967 theaters, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes from 20th Century Fox grossed $27.7 million through Friday and is on […]

  Early numbers at Deadline and elsewhere make DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (20th) the runaway winner at the Friday box office with $26-27M.  That could give it a weekend as high as $70M, at the high end of expectations and breezing past Rise of the Planet of the Apes and its $54.6M […]

  DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (20th) had a good but not overwhelming Thursday night showing with $4.1M.  That’s more than triple the $1.25M for 2011″s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but it’s far from the level for this summer’s tentpole blockbusters, which ranged from $8.1M for X-Men: Days of Future […]

Weekend #28 of 2014 is looking like $135 million for the top 12 films this weekend, -30% below the norm for this weekend.  Another really weak weekend in what is turning out to be a troubling summer at the box office.   Opening at over 3,800 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends […]

  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 […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Paramount again had the biggest week of all the major studios (up $177 million worldwide since last week) exclusively because of continued overseas grosses for Transformers: Age of Extinction.  For the year to date, Paramount is up to $1.25 billion worldwide (still in 5th place among the Hollywood studios).  Warner Brothers had the […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #27 of 2014 looks like $118 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, even worse than the $126 million estimate yesterday, now 31% below the norm for this weekend, and well below the $153.2 million weekend for the top 12 the last time July 4 fell on a […]

  Although ticket sales were up from July 4th, preliminary numbers at Deadline indicate that they remained very soft on Saturday, and in general, current releases will be at the low end of their weekend expectations.  That starts with TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (Paramount), which climbed less than 35% on Saturday to perhaps $14.5M.  That […]