OPENINGS:  Both RESIDENT EVIL:  RETRIBUTION (Screen Gems/Sony) and FINDING NEMO 3D (Pixar/Disney) are softer than expected.  Evil is likely to have a $21M weekend, which would be the lowest opening in the series since the 2002 original, while Nemo’s probable $17M will be far below The Lion King 3D‘s $30.2M and barely even with Beauty […]

The weekend still looks like a very good $123 million for the top 12 films, a little better than it looked yesterday.  Argo and Sinister flipped places in the weekend rankings.  Argo opened with $5.93 million Friday and jumped to $8.75 million Saturday.  A conservative estimate of $5.4 million today would put the 1979 Iranian Hostage rescue drama over $20 […]

  Bond is Boxoffice.  Big boxoffice. OPENINGS:  SKYFALL (Sony/MGM) and its $30.8M opening day (that doesn’t include $2.2M from Thursday’s IMAX-only “previews”) was about 12% ahead of the first day for Quantum of Solace in 2008.  But that spread should get wider over the weekend, as mediocre word-of-mouth gave Solace only a 2.5x multiplier for […]

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. […]

  OPENINGS:  LES MISERABLES (Universal) fell behind DJANGO UNCHAINED (Weinstein/Sony) for the first time on Friday, because Les Miz was up only 3% from Thursday, while Django rose more impressively by 17%.  Both should be around $85M by New Year’s Day.  Conventional wisdom has it that Les Miz will benefit more from Oscar season than Django, […]

  JACK THE GIANT SLAYER (Warners) climbed in its 2nd day of release, but not high enough to make any real difference.  Jack, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, had a 60% Saturday bump, a good-but-not-great family audience increase (Escape From Planet Earth rose 80% on its 2d day a couple of weeks ago), which […]

  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, Saturday was a step down from Good Friday’s boxoffice–and Easter Sunday is likely to be sharply worse.  GI JOE: RETALIATION (Paramount/MGM) fell from $15.5M to $15.2M on Saturday.  That’s a small drop, but normally a picture with strong word of mouth rises from Friday to Saturday.  (It is […]

  IRON MAN 3 (Disney) added some territories to its overseas footprint on Thursday, and had a huge $23.3M day, giving it a total of $36.5M in just 2 weekdays, with many more territories to open today.  It’s been pulling ahead of Iron Man 2 in many markets, and opening not far behind The Avengers, […]