OPENINGS:  STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS (Paramount) is the first underperformer of the summer, and there will be plenty of harrumphing and speculation about why that is.  With Sunday likely to be much weaker than last weekend’s Mother’s Day, Darkness will be hard-pressed to match in 4 days (plus Wednesday night screenings) the $79.2M that […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #52 of 2014 looks like $192 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, up +21% from the norm for this weekend ($158 million) and up +6% from the same weekend last year.   Opening at 3,131 theaters Thursday, Unbroken from Universal is on track for a $32.3 million opening three-day weekend (well above […]

  OPENINGS:  The box office for TWISTERS (Warners/Universal) was paradoxical.  In the US, the movie strongly outperformed expectations with $80.5M.  However, it showed much less appeal overseas, with $27.1M in 76 territories this weekend ($42.7M to date including some revenue from markets that opened last week).  Twisters is also about to lose virtually all its […]

  Deadline is reporting that THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) has set a new all-time Tuesday record with $32-35M, beating previous record-holder Transformers, the last movie to open on a Tuesday that fell on July 3, which had $27.9M in 2007.  (There are, admittedly, very few movies that open on Tuesdays–after Transformers, the next was the […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #1 of 2013 is now on pace for $126 million, a touch stronger than it looked yesterday and still very much line with the comparable weekend in previous years.  Both Texas Chainsaw 3D and Django Unchained are also looking a little stronger than they seemed yesterday, but the […]

  OPENINGS:  It was a sad lot of newcomers this holiday weekend.  TAMMY (Warners) is claiming a $21.2M weekend ($32.9M including Wed-Thurs), which will leave it struggling to get past $70M in the US.  (It also brought in $2.5M from a very small initial overseas release.)  DELIVER US FROM EVIL (Screen Gems/Sony) had a relatively […]

  At a cost of $175M (meaning $300M+ with global marketing), SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN (Universal) is a long way from profit.  But credit the studio with making “Snow White” seem cool enough to garner a solid opening (and credit the studio as well with cannily minimizing expectations, so a solid opening passes for […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, weekend #26 of 2015 now looks like $175 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, better than it looked yesterday and closer to hitting the norms for this weekend.  Jurassic World and Inside Out look stronger than they appeared yesterday, while the weekends for both openers have been downgraded slightly […]