The Martin Luther King Day holiday tends to be a day off more for schoolchildren than for adult employees, meaning that at the boxoffice, it benefits family movies–of which there’s a distinct shortage right now.  For adult-oriented films, the Friday gross is often around 25-30% of the 4-day weekend total (with new openings at […]

Weekend #25 of 2012 looks like another disappointment: a soft $150 million for the top 12 films, down 12% from last year’s comparable weekend and down 14% from the four-year average for the weekend.  Pixar’s Brave should open well, but the other two openers will struggle to find any audience and there certainly won’t be […]

  Seasonal Note:  Good Friday is traditionally a strong day for moviegoing, which explains the generally solid Friday-to-Friday holds below.  Easter Sunday, though, is less of a movie day, potentially bringing down weekend multiples. OPENINGS:  HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (TriStar/Sony) is impressively overperforming, its $7.9M Friday added to $7M from Wednesday and Thursday for a […]

> Early numbers for Thursday have TRANSFORMERS:  DARK OF THE MOON adding $21.5M to its boxoffice, making a total of $64.7M since Tuesday evening.  Comparing the Transformers movies isn’t apples to apples, because the first played a full day on its opening Tuesday, and the second didn’t begin until 12:01AM on Wednesday.  As of now, […]

  THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Warners) had a solid Saturday and no trouble at all beating the new competition in its 3d weekend of release.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Rises should have a $36.2M weekend, a 42% decline from last weekend that’s slightly better than the 43% Weekend 3 drop for The Dark […]

Weekend #36 of 2015 is looking like $54 million for the top 12 films this weekend, a touch better than last year but still below the norm for this weekend, normally the slowest of the year (see comparisons below). The Transporter Refueled from EuropaCorp should open with a $7.8 million three-day weekend and about $9.6 million Friday-Monday. No early […]

> Let’s take a look at just how remarkably THE HELP is performing so far.   The most obvious points of comparison are the literary-sourced, female-skewing hits of the last 2 Augusts:  Julie & Julia in 2009, and last year’s Eat Pray Love.  Julia had a $20M opening that led to a $94M domestic gross; Eat […]

  OPENINGS:  Expectations were low for KRAVEN THE HUNTER (Marvel/TSG/Columbia/Sony), and it still managed to under-deliver, with a puny $11M start.  Even though Kraven had moderate costs by superhero movie standards (around $175M including marketing), it will never climb past red ink, especially since things were no better overseas with $15M from 60 territories.  For […]