Preliminary numbers at Deadline give the Valentine’s Day boxoffice edge to, appropriately enough, the Nicholas Sparks sudsfest SAFE HAVEN (Relativity), probably at the expense of many unwilling spouses and significant others.  The soap is reported to have taken in around $10M for the day.  It will probably fall as the weekend shifts from Valentine’s […]

>Seven full weeks into 2012, domestic box office continues to run well ahead of last year’s slow pace and now has moved solidly ahead of the comparable period’s average for the last several years.                 The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between February 13 […]

Team Salem’s top pick (Pixar’s Brave) opened this weekend, helping increase the slate to $290 million, up almost $97 million from last week.  Meanwhile, continued strong business from Madagascar 3 and a few others pushed Team Metcalf’s almost-fully-release slate up a similar amount over the last week (up $95 million) to $1.17 billion.   Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter pushed […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #9 of 2015 looks like $86 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down significantly from the norms for this weekend and the first down weekend since January 9-11.   Opening at 3,323 theaters Friday, Focus from Warner Brothers is on track for a $18.5 million opening three-day weekend (somewhat below our […]

  Seth MacFarlane’s moment, it seems, has passed.  The three years that followed the triumphant opening of the original Ted included his missteps as Oscars host and as live action star of A Million Ways to Die In the West, and it seems to have taken its toll on TED 2 (MRC/Universal), which according to […]

  OPENINGS:  FIRST MAN (Perfect World/Universal) had an underwhelming $16.5M start, and considering its older-skewing audience, its 10% Saturday bump wasn’t impressive either.  It carries $150M+ in production/marketing costs, and a $50M US total would leave it at risk for red ink, since its very American story (flag controversy notwithstanding) makes foreign appeal questionable.  It […]

The fourth up weekend in a row, weekend #42 will be about 19% ahead of the multi-year average for this weekend.  However, Paranormal Activity 4 is on track for an opening weekend way below expectations and easily the softest of the franchise.  The weekend remains relatively strong, however, because of a fairly deep bench of […]

  OPENINGS:  The spectacular success of SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME (Marvel/Columbia/Sony) may have less to say about the box office overall than some would like to think.  No Way Home vaporized all pandemic-era records with a $253M weekend that was 2.8x the previous Covid high ($90M for Venom: Let There Be Carnage), becoming the #1 […]