OPENINGS:  The only reason to make a movie like THE CROODS (DreamWorks Animation/20th) is to get a piece of the remarkable overseas business that the Ice Age franchise sees ($716M on the last one alone), but so far, Croods is looking a little soft internationally, with $63.3M this weekend in territories covering roughly half the world.  That’s better than the […]

  OPENINGS:  OBLIVION (Universal) had a fairly good start, with a $13.3M Thursday night/Friday that should give it a $35-38M weekend, depending on word of mouth.  But that’s still lower than the $15.3M earned by GI Joe: Retaliation on its second day of release only 3 weeks ago, and at a probable higher cost (Universal […]

The 20th weekend of the year is looking like $158 million for the top 12 films, a little better than average for this weekend over the past few years but much better than the same weekend last year, which featured the opening of the one of the greatest clunkers/ punchlines/ punching bags ever: Battleship from […]

Updated international box office chart.

The complete Friday Box Office report will be posted at its usual time Saturday morning, but in the meantime we have one big over-performer in Despicable Me 2, one opener slightly above forecast (Kevin Hart) and one flat-out, embarrassing bomb (Lone Ranger), doing even worse than our bearish expectations. With $34.3 million Wednesday and $24.5 million […]

  Now that we’ve looked through all the major and mini-major Hollywood studios (Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Lionsgate/Summit) and examined their summers, today we’ll wrap up our summer studio survey with snapshots of some of the more prominent independent studios.  Summer isn’t their key season–the August/September film festivals will […]

  OPENINGS:  Comparisons between THE BUTLER (Weinstein) and The Help 2 years ago are somewhat skewed by the fact that Help opened on a Wednesday, so it had already earned $9.9M before its $26M weekend.  Nevertheless, an $8.3M Friday and probably a $22-25M weekend is excellent for Butler, whose next hurdle will be to show if […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #37 of 2013 looks like a very good $97 million for the top 12 films, up 18% from the average for the same weekend the past few years. Opening at 3,049 theaters Friday, Insidious Chapter 2 from FilmDistrict grossed $20.1 million Friday and is on track for a $42.3 million opening weekend (above the […]