What kind of summer movie season has it been, really?  For the past several weeks, business has been consistently up, erasing the losses from a soft spring, and even with 3D, Imax and inflation taken into account, more tickets are being sold.  But this marks the fourth consecutive weekend that an expensive, high-profile summer […]

  OPENINGS:  The summer saga of underperforming franchise titles continued with WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (TSG/20th), with a $56.5M start that’s 22% below the $72.6M opening for Dawn 3 years ago, and just barely ahead of the $54.8M for 2011’s Rise (despite costing $60M more to produce than Rise).  Even with rave […]

  OPENINGS:  The major studios took the weekend off in anticipation of next week’s The Batman overwhelming the market.  STUDIO 666 (Open Road) didn’t find much of a crowd for its Foo Fighters horror with a $1.6M weekend, and it probably won’t reach $10M in the US. CYRANO (UA/MGM) may have outsmarted itself, scheduled for […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #41 of 2013 looks like an okay $109 million for the top 12 films, down 10% from last year’s comparable weekend and down a nominal 2% from the average for the same weekend the past few years. Opening at 3,874 theaters Friday, Captain Phillips from Sony Pictures grossed $8.5 million Friday […]

  Just about everything in theatres this weekend is due to take a 60-70% dive on Super Bowl Sunday, which probably means that even if THAT AWKWARD MOMENT (Focus/Universal) maintains the slim current lead for Friday that it has in preliminary numbers at Deadline, it’s unlikely to stay ahead for the weekend.  At the moment, […]

  OPENINGS:  READY PLAYER ONE (Village Roadshow/Warners) had a fair if unthrilling start, with $41.2M over the 3-day Good Friday/Easter weekend plus $12M on its Thursday opening day for a $53.2M 4-day total, considerably less than the $61M Kong: Skull Island earned in its first 3 days.  That points toward a $125M US ultimate, and […]

>Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), Rise of the Planet of the Apes will dominate with a $54 million opening weekend, even stronger than estimated yesterday.  In contrast, looking even weaker than it did yesterday, The Change-Up is only able to generate a $13.5 million.  The weekend overall is now looking […]

> Transformers: Dark of the Moon debuts on the Worldwide Ranking chart at #3, probably destined to hit #2 in a few weeks (between Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Fast Five). Read more and see the updated Top 20 chart by clicking below. Hangover Part II and Kung Fu Panda 2 continue […]