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 +7% above last year and still +12% above the average for this point […]

  OPENINGS:  In what Hollywood hopes will be the last weekend of drought for a while, the TV episodes packaged as DEMON SLAYER:  KIMETSU NO YAIBA – TO THE HASHIRA TRAINING (Crunchyroll/Sony) led the newcomers with $11.6M, a bit better than the $10.1M for last year’s Demon Slayer episodes.  In addition, the film earned $13.7M […]

In the movie 42, Jackie Robinson (played by Chadwick Boseman) repeatedly asks Branch Rickey why he is breaking baseball’s unwritten whites-only rule.  Rickey (played by Harrison Ford) gives very vague, unsatisfying responses each time.  What a blown dramatic opportunity.  In Ken Burns’ nine-part documentary masterpiece “Baseball,” an aged Red Barber (the Dodgers’ radio broadcaster) describes the […]

  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 -5% below last year’s comparable span and still +1% above this point the past four years ($8.459 billion).  Over the same period, Hollywood films have grossed almost $22.9 […]

The Hobbit moved up with another $21 million overseas since last week, bringing the foreign total to $700 million and the worldwide total to just over $1 billion. The biggest mover this past week overseas was A Good Day to Die Hard, up $29 million to $162 million overseas to date and $229 million worldwide. Debuting this […]

  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 […]

  SNITCH (Summit/Lionsgate) held fairly well on Saturday, with a 40% bump, and as a result, the weekend race between it and IDENTITY THIEF (Universal) is currently too close to call, although preliminary numbers at Deadline have Identity Thief pulling out a narrow victory, $13.4M to $13.2M.  That result will likely hold, since those early […]

The holiday box office season is here, a revenue bonanza particularly between December 25 and January 2, when the top 10 films in North America total over $45 million per day on average.  And the top 10 totals often exceed $60 million each day between December 25 and 27.   As a baseline, we look […]