> According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, the weekend is looking auspicious for Mark Wahlberg’s CONTRABAND.  The modestly budgeted thriller (which, however, Universal has been expensively marketing for a solid month) is reporting a $7.7M Friday, which could mean $25-28M over the 4-day holiday weekend. Disney’s 3D re-release of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is also […]

  You might think we’re still a week away from the beginning of the summer movie season, but if you were overseas, you’d be wrong.  IRON MAN 3 (Disney) has already started its run in a dozen foreign territories, and by this weekend will be playing in 80% of the world (with China, as well […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #40 of 2013 looks like a decent $115 million for the top 12 films, down 13% from last year’s atypical weekend but up 17% from the average for the same weekend the past few years.  One movie is driving the entire weekend: Gravity and its new record for […]

  Its studio did everything in its corporate power to keep the quality of TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (Huahua/Paramount) from infecting ticket sales, preventing any reviews from appearing until the projectors had started on the movie’s first paid screenings.  But audiences knew what was coming, and in the US, Transformers 5 will be by far […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #14 of 2015 looks like $225 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, way above the norms for this weekend and setting a new record for early April. Opening at 4,004 theaters Friday, Furious 7 from Universal is on track for a $149.5 million opening three-day weekend (well above our $117.5 million ShowBuzzDaily forecast […]

  OPENINGS: KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE (MARV/20th) took the weekend, but at $39M it was below Fox’s minimal target number of $40M.  Since sequels burn out faster than initial films in a series, Golden Circle will probably end up around $100-120M in the US, compared to $128M for The Secret Service, and that’s on higher […]

> A gigantic apology…the total for Team Salem is now correct.  Salem leads by about $75 million going into this weekend.  Thanks to the comment by “Anonymous” for spotting the error by Metcalf (unintentional, I swear!).  Updated totals for the first annual ShowBuzzDaily Summer Movie Draft show Team Salem $800,000 ahead of Team Metcalf through […]

The 2014 holiday box office continues to be slightly better than average but slightly below last year. The top 10 films on Thursday January 1, 2015 totaled $46.3 million, somewhat above the average $44.8 million for the days since 2002 when this date landed on a weekday.  When January 1 last fell on a Thursday, […]