Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #3 of 2014 looks like $156 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up 33% to 43% from the comparable weekends the past few years. Opening at 2,663 theaters Friday, Ride Along from Universal grossed $14.5 million Friday, putting the buddy comedy on track for a $39.5 million opening three-day weekend (way above […]

  Although it also stars (and is produced by) Ice Cube, RIDE ALONG (Universal) goes down in the books as a big win for Kevin Hart, the focus of the movie’s marketing campaign.  Based on preliminary numbers at The Hollywood Reporter, the action comedy is on its way to a $40M+ 4-day Martin Luther King […]

Weekend #3 of 2014 is looking like $130 million for the top 12 films for the traditional Friday-Sunday portion of the long MLK weekend, up 14% from the average for this weekend the past few years. Opening at around 2,200 theaters Friday (below the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Ride […]

International box office for 2013 releases through January 12, 2014. Click here for a summary of worldwide performance by studio. We will start tracking the 2014 films in a few weeks.

Warner Brothers remains a mere $61 million ahead of second-place Disney, looking at worldwide grosses for films released in 2013.  Each of the top two studios reaped about $50 million this past week, mostly from overseas activity for The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (Warner Brothers) and Frozen (Disney).  For a complete ranking of 2013 films individually by worldwide performance click […]

  OPENINGS:  A bit surprisingly, LONE SURVIVOR (Universal) had no Saturday bump to speak of (under 1%), giving it a more frontloaded weekend than a movie appealing to an older audience (which tends not to run out on opening night) with strong reviews might be expected to have.  American Hustle, by way of comparison, went […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #2 of 2014 looks like $124 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 10% from the average for the same weekend the past few years (but better than we forecast earlier this week and now 2% above last year’s comparable weekend). Opening at 2,876 theaters Friday, Lone Survivor from Universal […]

  OPENINGS:  The only question for LONE SURVIVOR (Universal) to ponder as all concerned count their entirely unexpected riches this weekend (a $14.4M Friday and a weekend that could hit $40M) is whether they miscalculated by waiting to go wide until after polls were closed for the Oscar nominations.  Survivor is very much on the […]