The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between September 10 and September 16 grossed a piss-poor $93 million, down 19% from the four-year average for the week and down 21% from the same week last year.  We have to go back to the same week in 2004 to find […]

  THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN will begin spinning its midnight webs in just a few hours, so let’s take a quick look at its competition in the midnight screening record books. The Sam Raimi 2002-07 Spider-Man trilogy were successful at midnight, but with $8-10M grosses that have long since been passed. All of the current top […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is still -7% below last year’s comparable span (3 points better than last week) and now +1% above the average at this point the past four years ($4.105 billion).  Over the […]

>The weekend studio estimates (based on Friday and Saturday actuals and projections for Sunday) are coming in about the same as the weekend numbers posted yesterday (based on Friday actuals only).  The box office volume for the top 12 films is now looking like $117 million for the weekend, up 14% from last year’s weekend […]

Last weekend we said domestic box office would get back on track, and it turned out to be another very weak weekend (the third weekend in a row down around 20%).  We are going out on a limb again this week, forecasting an okay box office performance, with the top 12 films generating about $88 […]

  In an entertainment universe changing with bewildering speed, two stories today spoke to the difficulties and opportunities of old and new media.  First, let’s take a look at what’s happening to the traditional mode of seeing movies in theaters Big-budget adventure-adventure spectacles have long been the bread and butter of the Hollywood studios, and […]

> The past week (seven days ending Sunday) came in up 19% versus last year’s comparable week (the fourth significant increase in as many weeks).  Year-to-date box office is now down 4.6% versus last year.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes from 20th Century Fox set the pace for a solid weekend: it beat its weekend forecast […]

  Ugliness abounds, unless your title is Argo. OPENINGS:  CLOUD ATLAS (Warners) will be the tallest tree in the weekend’s bonzai forest, but that’s small comfort for a movie that cost $100M (plus heavy marketing) and probably won’t make much more than $10M for the weekend, based on its $3.5M Friday.  This, sadly, is why […]