It’s impossible to know at this point how the unspeakable events in Newtown on Friday will affect family behavior over the weekend, and even though this tragedy, unlike the Aurora massacre in July, has no direct connection to movies or theaters, the crowds that might have attended matinees of a four-quadrant event like THE […]

  The cash has started pouring in for THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warners/MGM).  In 3100 theatres, the film earned $13M in midnight screenings last night.  That was considerably higher than the $8M earned by the midnights for Return of the King, but King was in2003, before the phenomenon of midnight releases had really taken hold […]

The busy Christmas film season gets going this weekend with the opening of The Hobbit.  Not much else is happening at the box office as the movies from the last two weeks are pretty much dead and the Thanksgiving movies are getting a tad stale.  But the prequel to the uber-nerd extravaganza that is J.R.R. […]

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between December 3 and December 9 grossed only $101 million, down 3% from the four-year average for the week but up 13% from the same week last year.  The past six weeks are still 18% above the four-year average and 25% above […]

Life of Pi is gathering a lot of momentum overseas, with $45 million more internationally (bringing its overseas tally to $106 million to date).   Worldwide, the film is sitting at $188 million and 17th on our chart.  It could keep climbing to over $200 million, bringing it to 15th or maybe 14th on the chart. […]

  There was no miraculous Saturday save for the weekend’s one pitiful arrival. OPENINGS:  PLAYING FOR KEEPS (FilmDistrict) rose only 11% from Friday to Saturday, and since it’s claiming one of the lower Sunday drops in the Top 10, once the real tickets are counted it may not even hang on to its current $6M […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #49 is on pace to fall below the  multi-year average for this weekend by 9% — ending a solid four-week winning streak at the box office.  One movie dared to open on one of the weakest weekends of the year (usually ranked #49 out of 52 weeks in terms of […]

  OPENINGS:  PLAYING FOR KEEPS (FilmDistrict) cratered as expected, in 6th place on its opening day with a sad $2.1M start.  It’s on its way to a $6M weekend and perhaps $15M in total, which won’t even pay off its marketing costs. HOLDOVERS:  With essentially nothing new at the multiplexes, the longrunning hits mostly held […]