OPENINGS:  SPY (20th) came in at the low end of expectations with $30M–a number that may very well come down tomorrow when actuals are announced, since it assumes an aggressively strong Sunday hold.  Even at $30M, Spy is below the $39.1M start for The Heat and the $34.6M launch of Identity Thief, and although […]

  OPENINGS:  WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING (Columbia/Sony) launched with $17M, ahead of (low) expectations, and fueled by an audience of women in the midwest/south.  There’s no direct competition in sight, and it should be able to leg out past $50M in the US, which would be considered a win for the moderately-budgeted production.  Crawdads may […]

  OPENINGS:  RISEN (Affirm/Columbia/Sony) topped the weekend’s arrivals with an $11.8M start that was above the $11.4M for War Room and the $9.2M for God’s Not Dead, although it was well below Heaven Is For Real‘s $22.5M.  The Christian genre has tremendous multiples–both God’s and War Room ended up at 6x their opening weekends–and Risen […]

>Weekend #17 of 2012 looks like it will be about $112 million for the top 12 films, down 23% from last year’s comparable weekend (when Fast Five exploded with an $86 million opening weekend) and down 17% from the four-year average for this weekend.  A lack of compelling new product should make this weekend the […]

  Preliminary numbers at Deadline show a tightly-bunched, none too impressive weekend underway at the boxoffice.  ARGO (Warners), SILENT HILL:  REVELATION (Open Road), CLOUD ATLAS (Warners) and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 (Paramount) are all clustered around $3.5-4M for the day, which means it will be a question of dueling estimates on Saturday morning.  When the dust […]

  OPENINGS:  Word of mouth caught up with THE EMOJI MOVIE (Columbia/Sony) on Saturday, with a 14% drop (by comparison, Captain Underpants rose 11% on its 2d day of release, and last year’s Angry Birds Movie jumped 47%), but a $25.7M weekend is still good money for a movie no one seems to like.  (The […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2018 film slates by studio. The studio totals also include 2018 dollars for films released in late 2017. YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2018 to date is now +8% above last year and still +11% above the average for this point […]

For the 16 days December 16-31, the top 10 films each day in North America have totaled $871 million, now virtually even with last year’s pace and now -12% behind the record pace of 2015, when Star Wars: The Force Awakens dominated the holiday season. With Rogue One last year and The Last Jedi this year, the Star Wars franchise has definitely taken the holiday movie […]