The 22nd weekend of the year is looking like a very good $186 million for the top 12 films, up 30% or more from the same weekend in previous years.    Opening at over 3,000 theaters Friday (a slightly above average theater count), After Earth from Sony and starring Will and Jaden Smith should average $12,100 […]

  No authoritative boxoffice figures will be available until Sunday or Monday, as the studios would prefer that they not be associated with financial issues this weekend.   Although–properly–the focus of the stories on the senseless tragedy in Colorado has been on the madman who committed the actions, the studios are in a somewhat precarious position […]

  Be sure to read Mitch Metcalf’s Weekend Box Office Predictions. Momentum was lacking for THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES (Screen Gems/Sony), as the studio kept the movie from critics until the last possible instant and didn’t even have night-before screenings for audiences–one of the only films of the summer to wait till 12:01AM […]

  OPENINGS:  There were no new wide openings on this pre-holiday season weekend in the US, but things were busier overseas.  AQUAMAN (DC/Warners), which won’t arrive in the US until December 21, launched in China with a huge $93.6M, the best start for any Warner Bros film in that country, and almost as much as […]

  OPENINGS:  As expected, BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (Marvel/Disney) swamped the box office worldwide.  Its $180M US weekend was below Doctor Strange 2 ($187.4M) and the original Black Panther ($202M, on a Presidents Day weekend), but still the biggest opening Hollywood has seen in 6 months, reinforcing the MCU as the center of movie culture […]

  OPENINGS:  With a $10M production budget (and tens of millions in marketing on top), the $10.6M weekend for SINISTER 2 (Blumhouse/Gramercy/Focus/Universal) will test Blumhouse’s ability to make money out of just about anything.  The opening is far below the $18M start for 2012’s Sinister, and its US total won’t be near the $48.1M gross […]

  OPENINGS:  SAN ANDREAS (Village Roadshow/RatPac Dune/New Line/Warners) had a solid 13% Saturday bump that propelled it to a $53.2M weekend, significantly above expectations–and with no direct competition arriving next weekend, it should hold fairly well (until Jurassic World arrives in 2 weeks).  The surprising part of the picture is that given that level of […]

> For all the wildly unexpected success of THE LION KING, Disney has limited boxoffice upside, because the new Blu-Ray hits the streets on October 4, and that’s not likely to be a date that can be changed. The Friday number for DRIVE is right on the edge between meeting expectations and disappointing them; its […]