The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between August 13 and August 19 grossed a decent $196 million, up 7% from the four-year average for the comparable week and up 3% from the same week in 2011. Year to date (now over $6.8 billion for wide-release films) is now […]

  Paul W.S. Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson share the glory. OPENINGS:  W.S. Anderson’s RESIDENT EVIL:  RETRIBUTION (Screen Gems/Sony) took the weekend, but its $21.1M haul is the lowest the series has seen in a decade, and 20% below the opening of the last installment.  All of this only means something if it’s reflected overseas, […]

  Mitch Metcalf will have more to say about this weekend’s actual boxoffice numbers versus Sunday’s studio estimates later today, but one point is worth noting for its Oscar implications.  It was important to Warner Bros that ARGO, the studio’s big awards season hope and the fruit of its golden-boy director Ben Affleck (and also […]

Updated International chart — now tracking the past six months on a rolling basis.  At any given time, that will translate to about 75 films on the chart at a time. New this week is Skyfall, which will probably top out at around $650 million worldwide (between Madagascar 3 and Men in Black 3).

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between December 3 and December 9 grossed only $101 million, down 3% from the four-year average for the week but up 13% from the same week last year.  The past six weeks are still 18% above the four-year average and 25% above […]

Based on Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #52 is now on pace for $168 million, very similar to the outlook yesterday.  However, Django Unchained and Les Miserables continue to move in opposite directions.   Yesterday, it looked like both films would be around $29 million for the weekend (with Les Mis only $400,000 behind Django).  But based […]

  An ugly day, even by Super Bowl Weekend standards. OPENINGS:  WARM BODIES (Summit/Lionsgate) proved to be decent counterprogramming by aiming at a young woman audience, and with a $7.6M Friday, should be on its way to a $18-20M weekend, and perhaps $50M before it’s done.  No such luck for BULLET TO THE HEAD (Warners), […]

  OPENINGS:  Two studios stretched as far as they could in coming up with weekend estimates for their bombs, claiming the lowest Sunday drops in the Top 10 to reach numbers that may well fall when actual figures are released on Monday.  The sadder story was JACK THE GIANT SLAYER (Warners), as though it really […]