If Thursday night ticket sales are any guide, TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (Paramount) may not have the weekend opening that will change the face of this so-so box office summer, as many had hoped and even expected.  With shows starting at 9PM, including IMAX, Transformers 4 took in $8.75M.  That’s better than X-Men: Days […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  No change in the studio rankings this week with no studio increasing more than $100 million over the past 7 days worldwide.  Fox’s modest gain this week comes mostly from the domestic potential for Let’s Be Cops and continued overseas grosses for How to Train Your Dragon 2.  Disney’s weekly gain is mostly a function of […]

  OPENINGS:  As YA franchises go, the $11.3M opening day for THE MAZE RUNNER (20th) was ahead of the $9.6M for the first Percy Jackson, which ended up with a $31.2M weekend.  Maze is being pitched more to teens than to families, so it may not have quite as strong a weekend multiple as Percy, […]

  OPENINGS:  The $23.5M opening for FURY (QED/Columbia/Sony) puts it at risk of being passed next weekend by the low-grade Keanu Reeves vehicle John Wick.  Fury has the distinction of being the lowest-grossing movie to open at #1 this year since Mr. Peabody & Sherman back in March, and that’s not what Brad Pitt in […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #47 of 2014 looks like $194 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up a small 4% the norm for this weekend ($186 million) but down a significant -11% from the same weekend last year. Opening at 4,151 theaters, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 from Lionsgate/Summit grossed $56.5 million late Thursday and […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #51 of 2014 now looks like $127 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up slightly from yesterday’s estimate ($126 million) and now up 5% from the norm for this weekend ($121 million) but down -8% from the same weekend last year.   Continuing at 3,875 theaters, The Hobbit: […]

Weekend #3 of 2015 is looking like $134 million for the top 12 films this weekend, up from the norm for this weekend but down from the same weekend last year. Opening at around 3,200 theaters Friday (above the 2,886 average theater count for opening weekends the last two years), American Sniper from Warner Brothers should average a solid $8,800 per theater for the […]

  OPENINGS:  None of the newcomers made much of an impression.  At the moment, MCFARLAND USA (Disney) is claiming a slim victory over THE DUFF (CBS/Lionsgate), $11.3M vs. $11M, but that’s based on a far more aggressive Sunday estimate by Disney (predicting a 30% Sunday drop vs 42%), and when the numbers are so close, […]