>Through Thursday, Team Metcalf’s lead in the ShowBuzzDaily Summer Movie Draft stands at almost $115 million.  This weekend Team Salem opens Rise of the Planet of the Apes, while Team Metcalf has no movies left to open.  Check back Monday for the update with the weekend’s numbers, and click “Read more” to see the updated chart. […]

> Due to the Martin Luther King holiday on Monday, all studios are estimating low Sunday drops, although some are projecting more aggressively than others. UNIVERSAL:  CONTRABAND held almost even on Saturday, which is good for an action movie, and is projecting a reasonable (given the holiday) 21% drop on Sunday.  It should get to […]

Ice Age: Continental Drift enters the worldwide box office chart in 5th place among the movie released the last four months.  Our projected $177 million domestic total is at the low end of the franchise (the original Ice Age grossed a similar $176 million domestic, far below the $197 million for Ice Age 3 and $195 million for Ice Age 2). […]

  X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (20th) was fated to walk away with Memorial Day Weekend, and it’s starting off its run in high style, with a preliminary $36M (including $8.1M from Thursday night) reported at Deadline and elsewhere.  If that number holds, it would be the 3rd highest opening day of the year (behind […]

>The 12th weekend of the year should be a whopper: about $176 million for the top 12 films.  How big is that for the fourth weekend in March?  Enormous, unprecedented: up 62% from last year’s comparable weekend and up 55% from the four-year average for this weekend.  Of course, this weekend is all about The […]

  OPENINGS:  DESPICABLE ME 2 (Universal) had an even better weekend overseas than it did in the US, with $88.8M (in 45 markets, with plenty more major ones to come) vs $82.5M.  (Of course, in the US it also had the benefit of a holiday week, giving it a huge $142.1M here so far.)  The […]

Updated international box office chart.  

  OPENINGS:  As expected, BLACK PANTHER: WAKANDA FOREVER (Marvel/Disney) swamped the box office worldwide.  Its $180M US weekend was below Doctor Strange 2 ($187.4M) and the original Black Panther ($202M, on a Presidents Day weekend), but still the biggest opening Hollywood has seen in 6 months, reinforcing the MCU as the center of movie culture […]