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 […]

  JASON BOURNE (Universal) is performing in line with expectations.  Preliminary numbers at Deadline have its opening day at $22M (including $4.3M from Thursday night), down just 10% from the $24.7M start (with no Thursday screenings) for 2007’s Bourne Ultimatum, the last Matt Damon/Paul Greenglass title in the franchise.  Great word of mouth gave Ultimatum […]

Based on Friday’s and  Saturday’s grosses, weekend #33 of 2014 now looks like a modest $129 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a little better than yesterday’s forecast ($124 million) and 11% above the norm for this weekend ($116 million) but still below our forecast ($140 million). Playing at 3,094 theaters, Let’s Be Cops from Fox […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #8 of 2015 looks like $106 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, a little softer than it looked yesterday but still somewhat above the norms for this weekend.   Opening at 2,755 theaters Friday, McFarland, USA from Disney is on track for an $11.3 million opening three-day weekend (now slightly […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Fox expanded its lead with $147 million worldwide this week, mostly from the release of The Maze Runner, pushing the studio to over $3.8 billion worldwide for the year to date.  Disney is in second with $2.6 billion, and Warner Brothers remains in third place with almost $2.5 billion.  In the chart below […]

Three films are really driving a very solid box office weekend: The Amazing Spider-Man (now a $65.0 million opening weekend and $140 million six-day opening, hitting our forecast in Tuesday’s ShowbuzzDaily Weekend Predictions), the second weekend of Ted (down a very decent 40% from its opening) and the third weekend of Brave (down 41% this […]

As Dark Shadows followed The Avengers last year in the second weekend of May, The Great Gatsby will try to follow Iron Man 3’s huge opening last weekend.  Let’s face it, the TV spots for Gatsby make the film look like a lame costume party or some kind of high school production, and the racing […]

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between August 20 and August 26 grossed a fairly typical $146 million, down 1% from the four-year average for the comparable week and up 6% from the same week in 2011. Year to date (now over $7 billion for wide-release films) continues […]