> The Hollywood Reporter has some early numbers for the weekend’s overseas boxoffice.  (Remember:  comparisons of international boxoffice receipts aren’t necessarily apples-to-apples, as films follow different distribution patterns with respect to number and size of markets.)  As in the US, BREAKING DAWN PART 1 is in the lead, with a projected $40M from 73 territories […]

> Due to the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday, all studios are estimating low Sunday drops, although some are projecting more aggressively than others. UNIVERSAL:  CONTRABAND held almost even on Saturday, which is good for an action movie, and is projecting a reasonable (given the holiday) 21% drop on Sunday.  It should get to […]

> Saturday was a little weaker than expected, according to preliminary boxoffice figures reported by Deadline, resulting in some shortfalls compared to initial weekend estimates.  21 JUMP STREET (Sony) had a small Saturday decline of about 5%, which should get it to around $34M for the weekend.  The novelty of Will Ferrell speaking Spanish in […]

> Hollywood, like teen girls before a Twilight opening, counts the hours until THE AVENGERS arrives. OPENINGS:  Universal badly miscalculated when it scheduled THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT for a weekend when Think Like A Man and The Lucky One were both available for the romance market.  The movie was moderately budgeted (although it had a substantial […]

The domestic box office was back down this week.  Volatility has been the operative word recently.  The first two weeks of May (April 30-May 13) were up more than 35% each from prior years, followed by the next three weeks (May 14-June 3) which were down around 15% each week.  Then last week was up […]

Ice Age: Continental Drift enters the worldwide box office chart in 5th place among the movie released the last four months.  Our projected $177 million domestic total is at the low end of the franchise (the original Ice Age grossed a similar $176 million domestic, far below the $197 million for Ice Age 3 and $195 million for Ice Age 2). […]

  Yesterday we looked at some of the ways that the costs of producing a feature film are higher and more complicated than they might seem.  Today, some additional obstacles that lie between any movie and profitability.   These may be the most important and least-understood part of profitability calculations.  Every entity that distributes a […]

Weekend #35 of 2012 looks fairly similar to the Labor Day weekends over the past few years.  Only about $81 million for the top 12 films this weekend (defined as the three-day Friday-Sunday portion we always concentrate on), and very little chance of any new film breaking out on what is traditionally a very rough […]