Darren Aronofsky’s NOAH (Paramount) began screening at 7PM last night and took in $1.6M, a very respectable result for a serious film aimed at older and perhaps family audiences.  (No one expected it to be in a league with the $4.9M for Divergent or $3.6M for 300: Rise of An Empire.)  Because it’s one […]

  It’s looking like a slow weekend at the box office, although the successive arrivals of Divergent, Noah and Captain America 2 over the next 3 weeks should keep it from becoming a trend. Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, NEED FOR SPEED (DreamWorks/Disney) probably won’t even reach $20M for the weekend.  Its reported $6.5M […]

International box office chart:

  OPENINGS:  In the US, DADDY’S HOME 2 (Paramount) eked out a victory among the newcomers at $30M, thanks to a 6% family audience bump on Saturday.  That’s still 22% below the opening for the first Daddy’s Home, and it’s likely that spread will increase greatly through the week, since the original comedy opened on […]

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 […]

  A strong Saturday lifted everything at the multiplex. OPENINGS:  Obviously AMERICAN SNIPER (Warners/Village Roadshow) wouldn’t be what it is without Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper, but the contributions of the Warners marketing group shouldn’t be overlooked.  Building the trailer and the initial TV ads almost entirely around the one moment in the film where […]

  OPENINGS:  IT ENDS WITH US (Wayfarer/Columbia/Sony) roared past expectations with a remarkable $50M.  That studio estimate comes with a couple of asterisks–it includes an unspecified amount from wide Wednesday screenings, and assumes an extremely strong Sunday hold–but even so, it’s a great start for a drama that may not even have $75M in production/worldwide […]

The big gainers overseas this week: Brave (up $33 million, finally over the $200 million milestone overseas), Dark Knight Rises (up $31 million this week overseas), Ted (up $25 million overseas this week), Total Recall (up $22 million this week),  Ice Age: Continental Drift (up $18 million to an incredible $662 million overseas to date) and Madagascar 3 (up $17 million to $369 million […]