The 39th weekend of the year is looking like a good $114 million for the top 12 films, up 22% from the $94 million multi-year average for this weekend. Opening at over 3,800 theaters Friday (way above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 from Sony should average […]

  Based on preliminary Saturday numbers at Deadline, adjustments from the morning’s weekend estimates will be minimal, although mostly in the wrong direction.  GOOSEBUMPS (Columbia/Sony) increased 31% from Friday to Saturday, a modest result for a family movie (Hotel Transylvania 2 jumped 56% on its 2d day of release), giving it a 2-day total of […]

>Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), the total box office for this weekend is now looking like $151 million, up 2% from last year.  Saturday business (impacted by New Year’s Eve) was not as rough as expected and the studio projections are now fairly rosy, as they are expecting a […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studios (films entering wide release in the 2019 calendar year), including worldwide box office for those films during 2020. We will begin the track of the 2020 slate soon. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2020 begins +7% above […]

STUDIO SCORECARD. 20th Century Fox vaulted ahead of Paramount into fourth place in worldwide box office for 2013 to date, mostly because of The Wolverine.  Universal and Warner Brothers remain a very close #2 and #3, respectively, with both studios grossing well over $100 million this past week (primarily from overseas grosses for Universal’s Despicable Me […]

>Final box office grosses for the weekend came in late, and the top three movies were somewhat lower than projected on Sunday.  For example, the Paranormal Activity 3 opening weekend was projected to gross $54.0 million on Sunday, but the actual number came in at $52.6 million.  Looking at all films in release, the past […]

> As schools close and vacations begin, a lot of money is about to flood into Hollywood for about 2 blissful weeks.  But not enough to make up for the rest of a doleful year. SHERLOCK HOLMES:  GAME OF SHADOWS (Warners):  With a studio estimate that just barely managed to nudge above $40M–and needed an […]

  Expectations were low for the holiday weekend’s expensive new openings, and that’s proving to be accurate.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, it was the low-budget THE PURGE:  ELECTION YEAR (Blumhouse/Universal) that led the group on Friday with $13.4M (including $3.6M from Thursday night), better than the $13M opening day for Anarchy, the last […]