We won’t have confirmed Saturday numbers for several more hours (or final figures until Monday), but based on preliminary grosses at Deadline, DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate) held surprisingly well on its second day of release, down just 14% to $19.7M.  That would be far better than the Day 2 drop for the original Twilight (down 41%), […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #12 of 2014 looks like $131 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, very similar to the same weekend last year and 8% below the average for this weekend the past several years.   Opening at 3,936 theaters late Thursday, Divergent from Lionsgate/Summit grossed $22.8 million through Friday, putting the film on track […]

  What was supposed to be an exciting pre-summer weekend at the box office is instead looking rather blah. OPENINGS:  Compared to recent YA disasters like The Mortal Instruments and Beautiful Creatures, DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate) looks pretty good with a $22.8M Friday ($4.9M of it from Thursday night), up marginally from Friday night estimates.  But this […]

  It’s clear, based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, that DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate) isn’t going to reach prerelease hopes of an opening in line with the $69M of the original Twilight, much less that movie’s sequels or The Hunger Games.  The question is how low it will go.  Divergent had around $22M on Friday (which includes […]

  DIVERGENT (Summit/Lionsgate), in case you hadn’t heard, is purportedly The Next Big YA Thing.  It’s off to a $4.9M start in Thursday night shows that began at 8PM, and that’s a solid but–for this genre–unimpressive number.  YA movies, especially those aimed at young women audiences, are notoriously frontloaded, and back in November 2008, the […]

Weekend #12 of 2014 is looking like $149 million for the top 12 films, slightly better than this same weekend on average in previous years. Opening at around 3,800 theaters Friday (well above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Divergent from Lionsgate/Summit should average $16,800 per theater for the weekend (for a $63.5 […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Year to date, Warner Brothers has moved well ahead of its competing studios, thanks to two bona fide hits to balance two strikeouts.  Sony and Universal, the next level down each with around $450 million worldwide to date, has a similar hit and miss ratio to Warner Brothers, but the hits are […]

  As Hollywood becomes more and more dependent on action and animation franchises, the US market becomes increasingly less relevant. OPENINGS:  NEED FOR SPEED (DreamWorks/Disney) made more money in China ($21.2M) on its opening weekend than it did in the US ($17.8M).  Combined with $24.4M from 39 other territories around the world, Need is likely […]