> Hollywood, like teen girls before a Twilight opening, counts the hours until THE AVENGERS arrives. OPENINGS:  Universal badly miscalculated when it scheduled THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT for a weekend when Think Like A Man and The Lucky One were both available for the romance market.  The movie was moderately budgeted (although it had a substantial […]

The domestic box office was back down this week.  Volatility has been the operative word recently.  The first two weeks of May (April 30-May 13) were up more than 35% each from prior years, followed by the next three weeks (May 14-June 3) which were down around 15% each week.  Then last week was up […]

Ice Age: Continental Drift enters the worldwide box office chart in 5th place among the movie released the last four months.  Our projected $177 million domestic total is at the low end of the franchise (the original Ice Age grossed a similar $176 million domestic, far below the $197 million for Ice Age 3 and $195 million for Ice Age 2). […]

  Yesterday we looked at some of the ways that the costs of producing a feature film are higher and more complicated than they might seem.  Today, some additional obstacles that lie between any movie and profitability.   These may be the most important and least-understood part of profitability calculations.  Every entity that distributes a […]

Weekend #35 of 2012 looks fairly similar to the Labor Day weekends over the past few years.  Only about $81 million for the top 12 films this weekend (defined as the three-day Friday-Sunday portion we always concentrate on), and very little chance of any new film breaking out on what is traditionally a very rough […]

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between September 17 and September 23 grossed a weak $107 million, down 12% from the four-year average for the week and down a big 24% from the same week last year.  We have to go back to the same week in 2007 […]

This weekend is on track to be the fifth weekend in a row to be up over the previous years.  None of the openers look like big hits — it’s just that Argo is hanging around very well in its third week and there are more films at or near $10 million this weekend than […]

This weekend is solid but definitely cooler than last weekend’s torrid pace:  $180 million for the top 12 films this Friday-Sunday, up 10% from a typical fourth weekend in November.  The final Twilight installment will remain at the top of the chart this weekend, while Skyfall’s third weekend will challenge the family-friendly Rise of the […]