ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD (Columbia/Sony), the summer’s great adult-oriented, non-franchise, auteur/movie star hope, had a solid start per preliminary numbers at Deadline with a $16.7M opening day (including $5.8M from Thursday night).  That’s the biggest opening of Quentin Tarantino’s career, higher than the $14.4M for Inglourious Basterds and the $15M for Django […]

  OPENINGS:  THE LION KING (Disney) was expected to be the crown jewel in Disney’s recreations of its animated classics, and despite sharply mixed reviews, it delivered with a $185M opening weekend–and that studio estimate includes a fairly conservative number for Sunday, so it could go higher in finals.  If it stays at $185M, it […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is now -6% below last year’s comparable span (two points better than last week) and now basically even with this point the past four years ($5.987 billion).  Over the same period, […]

  OPENINGS:  CRAWL (Paramount) may be an example of a studio outsmarting itself.  Paramount held no critics screenings, presumably because disdain was expected, and thus was unable to create any advance buzz around a response that turned out to be remarkably enthusiastic (88% on Rotten Tomatoes).  The result was a tepid $12M opening, and since […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is still -8% below last year’s comparable span (one point better than two weeks ago) and now -1% below this point the past four years ($5.728 billion).  Over the same period, […]

  OPENINGS:  SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME (Columbia/Sony) owned the Independence Day holiday, with $93.6M over the 3-day weekend, and a $185.1M total since its Tuesday opening.  Comparisons are inexact due to the 6-day holiday start, but it was considerably ahead of The Amazing Spider-Man, which also had a 6-day opening (with July 4th on Wednesday […]

WORLDWIDE STUDIO SCORECARD.  Here is an updated look at the 2019 film slates by studio. BOX OFFICE. Looking at North American box office, 2019 is now -8% below last year’s comparable span (one point better than last week) and now basically even with the average at this point the past four years ($5.434 billion).  Over […]

  The MCU continues to be America’s uber-franchise, as SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME (Columbia/Sony) became the first summer mega-movie in several weeks to fully live up to expectations.  Few films have opened on the Tuesday before a Thursday July 4th, so comparisons aren’t exact, but Far From Home earned $91.5M on its Tuesday-Thursday (The Amazing […]