Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #29 of 2013 looks like a decent $178 million for the top 12 films, about even with the average for this weekend over the past several years (but down significantly from last year’s same weekend which was dominated by the opening of The Dark Knight Rises).   Opening at 2,903 […]

  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, THE CONJURING (Warners) might be headed for the biggest horror opening of the year.  It reportedly pulled in $16.5M on Thursday night/Friday, neck-and-neck with the $16.8M that The Purge made on its opening day.  But Conjuring has the kind of strong reviews and exit polls that suggest it might […]

  We’ve reached the last of our major studio midsummer surveys (we’ll take a look at mini-majors and indie distributors next week), having tackled Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony,and 20th Century Fox.  Our final target is Universal Pictures. It was all going so well for Universal–until this weekend.  After going a remarkable 3 for 3 […]

  The weekend looks highly promising for THE CONJURING (Warners), which haunted up $3.3M in screenings that began 7PM on Thursday night.  Although other summer openings have had similar mid-$3M starts (including The Great Gatsby and World War Z), the closest analogue here is probably the $3.4M earned by low-budget The Purge in its Thursday […]

  Our parade of studio summers continues. We’ve reviewed Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, and Sony, and today’s focus is on 20th Century Fox. Fox has had a distinct strategy this summer, counterprogramming with comedy and animation while all the other studios were duking it out with massive action movies, and holding its own spectacles for […]

  We’re continuing our review of how Hollywood has been faring this summer on a studio-by-studio basis.  We’ve taken looks at Disney, Warner Bros, and Paramount, and today our crosshairs are trained on Sony. So are a lot of other crosshairs.  Sony has been in the news this summer for all the wrong reasons.  Major […]

The 29th weekend of the year is looking like $178 million for the top 12 films, about normal for this weekend on average the past few years but down significantly from last year, which was dominated by the opening of The Dark Knight Rises and the madness of the theater shooting in suburban Denver. Opening at […]

  Our summertime look at the health of Hollywood’s studios continues.  We’ve already examined Disney and Warner Bros, and today Paramount is in our viewfinder. Since getting out of both the Marvel and the DreamWorks Animation business, Paramount has been sedate, even sedentary, with the quietest summer of any studio.  Management has been fairly stable, […]