HOME (DreamWorks Animation/20th) should soothe the embattled studio and its investors a bit.  According to preliminary numbers at Deadline, Home earned $15M on Friday, almost double the $8M start for DWA’s Mr. Peabody and Sherman, and almost in a league with the $18.8M first day for How To Train Your Dragon 2.  That should […]

  OPENINGS:  ONE PIECE FILM: RED (Crunchyroll/Sony) opened at $9.5M, on the low end of recent national anime releases compared to Jujutsu Kaisen‘s $18M and Dragon Ball Super‘s $21.1M.  As is typical for the genre, it was extremely frontloaded, earning more than 50% of its weekend total by the end of Friday.  However, its US […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #36 of 2014 looks like $50 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, 20% below the norm for this weekend ($66 million).  This weekend after Labor Day is usually the worst weekend of the year, and this year did not disappoint. Opening at 1,950 theaters, The Identical from Freestyle Releasing grossed […]

The 33rd weekend of 2012 is looking like $129 million for the Top 12 films Friday-Sunday, not as strong as we forecast Wednesday (because Expendables 2 is not as big as we forecast) but still up well over 20% from comparable weekends the past several years.             The Expendables 2 from […]

  Franchise sequels are typically more frontloaded than the original installments, because there’s an established fanbase that wants to catch up with the latest update to the story.  For example, the first Hunger Games made $19.7M on its Thursday night, which made up part of a $67.3M opening day, while Catching Fire had $25.3M on Thursday […]

Posting this update later than usual for the record. The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between December 17 and December 23 grossed a dreadful $155 million, down 41% from the four-year average for the week and down 27% from week #51 last year.  To be fair, December 25 […]

  OPENINGS:  TRANSFORMERS: RISE OF THE BEASTS (Hasbro/Paramount) launched at the higher end of tracking expectations with $60.5M.  Beasts is a much bigger-budgeted effort than its immediate predecessor, 2018’s Bumblebee (which opened with $21.7M but had a 6x multiple thanks to word of mouth and the dynamics of the Christmas box office).  More impressively, Beasts […]

  The continents drift, and so does the boxoffice. OPENINGS:  ICE AGE:  CONTINENTAL DRIFT (20th), at $16.5M, was 25% below the opening for Ice Age 2, and lower than the first Friday of Ice Age 3 (which opened on a Wednesday), but the franchise gets the overwhelming bulk of its revenue from overseas–something like 70%–so unless […]