OPENINGS:  With a $10M production budget (and tens of millions in marketing on top), the $10.6M weekend for SINISTER 2 (Blumhouse/Gramercy/Focus/Universal) will test Blumhouse’s ability to make money out of just about anything.  The opening is far below the $18M start for 2012’s Sinister, and its US total won’t be near the $48.1M gross […]

  Friday’s boxoffice was like The Good, The Bad & The Ugly–except without the “good.” OPENINGS:  All the stunt casting in the world couldn’t make anyone want to see ROCK OF AGES (Warners).  The anemic $5.4M opening day was low even by the standards of Broadway adaptations, and there’s no reason to expect a lift […]

  OPENINGS:  At $53.5M, SHAZAM (DC/New Line/Warners) had the lowest opening weekend of the current DC run of superhero movies (it was also below all the Marvel openings), but it was produced to be a lower-budget companion piece to the megabusters, and with that in mind, its opening was fine.  Overseas was bigger at $102M, but […]

  THE LEGO MOVIE 2: THE SECOND PART (Warners Animation) is looking like a textbook example of a studio watering down its own franchise.  Warners jumped into 2 spin-offs before even reaching its first official sequel, and the result according to early numbers at Deadline is a $8.9M opening day, down 48% from the first […]

>Three films join the worldwide box office tracking chart this weekend.  With a profile similar to Tintin‘s (very good overseas appeal but limited domestic interest), The Secret World of Arrietty is just outside of the top 10 movies over the last three months.  The anime import from Japan has grossed $126 million overseas, but we […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #45 of 2013 looks like $161 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 $31.6 million Friday and $31.7 million Saturday, now on […]

>The weekend studio estimates (based on Friday and Saturday actuals and projections for Sunday) are coming in slightly stronger than the weekend numbers posted yesterday (based on Friday actuals only).  The box office volume for the top 12 films is now looking like an excellent $153 million for the weekend, up 27% from last year’s […]

    J and K aren’t the only ones wearing black today. OPENINGS:  In what’s starting to look like a bad summer for any movie not called The Avengers, MEN IN BLACK 3 (Sony) opened with a subpar $18M on Friday.  Sony is doing the only thing it can do, which is to point at […]