This weekend’s numbers will need some examination, with plenty of spin available in all directions.  Preliminary estimates at Deadline have BOO!  A MADEA HALLOWEEN (Lionsgate) a hair ahead of JACK REACHER: NEVER GO BACK (Skydance/Huahua/Shanghai Film Group/Paramount) on Friday, $9.2M vs. $9.1M.  There are several reasons why this is a bigger win than it […]

> RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES pulled in around $1.25M in its Thursday midnight screenings.  This is better than the $800K that Cowboys & Aliens managed last week, but dwarfed by the $4M Captain America earned and Thor‘s $3.3M.  (Let’s not even talk about Harry Potter.)  This supports Mitch Metcalf’s prediction that Apes […]

  OPENINGS:  THE EXORCIST: BELIEVER (Blumhouse/Morgan Creek/Universal) was at the low end of expectations with $27.2M, and it was also below projections internationally with $17.9M in 52 markets.  It’s hard to tell just what this means in terms of the bottom line, because while a $125M worldwide total wouldn’t look terrible against $30M in production […]

  We’re just a few hours away from the launch of THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY PART I (Lionsgate) in over 4000 US theatres, not to mention 85 overseas territories (basically worldwide, with the exceptions of China–where the opening was originally scheduled for this week but abruptly pushed to 2015–Japan and India).  There’s very little question […]

>Deadline is reporting that Cowboys & Aliens ended up edging The Smurfs at the weekend finish line, $36.4 million to $35.6 million.  But remember that given the genre of each film, The Smurfs should easily outgross Cowboys & Aliens in the long run.  The #1 status of Cowboys & Aliens will be very short-lived, indeed.  […]

Weekend #36 of 2015 is looking like $54 million for the top 12 films this weekend, a touch better than last year but still below the norm for this weekend, normally the slowest of the year (see comparisons below). The Transporter Refueled from EuropaCorp should open with a $7.8 million three-day weekend and about $9.6 million Friday-Monday. No early […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD. Scroll down for domestic and overseas grosses for each film individually so far in 2014. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2014 is still running -5% behind last year and -3% below the average for this point the past four years ($8.653 billion).  Over the same period, […]

The 47th weekend of the year is looking like $238 million for the top 12 films, just about where the weekend before Thanksgiving should be. Opening at over 4,100 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire from Lionsgate/Summit should average a superior $40,800 per […]