OPENINGS:  Not much changed between Friday’s results and weekend studio estimates.  THE DARK TOWER (MRC/Columbia/Sony) was unsurprisingly frontloaded between fans of the novels and bad word of mouth, and it dropped 13% on Saturday.  Sony is projecting a $19.5M weekend (the fact that the studio didn’t push the number past $20M indicates either honesty […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, Weekend #45 of 2013 looks like $160 million for the top 12 films, not the record we had forecast but still 21% above the recent average for this weekend. Opening at 3,841 theaters Friday, Thor: The Dark World from Disney and Marvel grossed $31.8 million Friday and is on track for a $84.3 million […]

      Continuing to wield a mighty hammer at the boxoffice, THE AVENGERS on Monday had the highest non-holiday, non-summer Monday of all time with $18.9M.  That handily beat the previous record holder Avatar, which had $16.4M on December 21, 2009.  Avengers has already grossed $700M worldwide, with much more to come.

  STAR TREK BEYOND (Skydance/Alibaba/Huahua/Paramount) is showing a fair franchise hold by the standards of this summer.  Based on preliminary numbers at Deadline, it had a $23M opening day (including $5.5M from Thursday), down about 26% from the start of 2009’s Star Trek reboot.  (2013’s Into Darkness opened on a Thursday, changing its weekend dynamic.)  That suggests a $57M […]

> The most successful movie of all time, Avatar, had an opening weekend ($77M) that only ranks 38th on the list of the biggest openings.  Conversely, the #1 opening weekend of all time belongs to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part II), with $169M, more than double Avatar‘s–but its total gross of $381M puts […]

Not the disaster we expected, the 25th weekend of 2012 is looking like $158 million for the Top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down 7% from this weekend last year and down 10% from a more normal third weekend in June.  Brave is on track to open solidly (about $7 million more than forecast for the weekend), […]

  Saturday matinees, and the families who attend them, were the difference for BIG HERO 6 (Disney) this weekend.  Disney’s roly-poly new action star came back from being around $1.2M behind INTERSTELLAR (Par/Warners) on Friday to top the weekend by about $5M, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  On Saturday, Big Hero 6 jumped by […]

Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #44 of 2014 looks like $76 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, down a big 38% the norm for this weekend ($123 million), which admittedly does not usually have Halloween ruining it by falling on Friday. Opening at 2,766 theaters, Nightcrawler from Open Road Films grossed $3.2 million Friday and […]