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 […]

Based on Friday’s and Saturday’s grosses, Weekend #46 of 2013 now looks like $123 million for the top 12 films, about $4 million above yesterday’s estimate. Opening at 2,024 theaters Friday, The Best Man Holiday from Universal grossed $10.7 million Friday and $12.4 million Saturday is now on track for a $30.6 million opening weekend (still well above […]

> THE HELP will be the year’s first “serious” movie to gross over $100M.  September is traditionally one of the softest months on the movie release calendar, and 2011 is no exception:  although there are a few promising arrivals like Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion and the film adaptation of  Moneyball, the major openings (they hope) include […]

>John Carter joins the worldwide box office chart, ranked at #13 out of 44 wide-release films over the past three months.  We are currently estimating John Carter could total $75 million in North America, but the overseas total to date is already $70 million.  If the overseas total ends up around $125 million, the film […]

>The Help sits at the top of the heap thanks to a terrific 19% drop in its second weekend and especially thanks to the very weak crop of openers that make up that heap.  Spy Kids 4, Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night all are opening below forecast and headed for a quick end on […]

  OPENINGS:  This weekend consists of THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warners/MGM) and then everything else.  Hobbit set a December opening day record with $37.5M, and it will set the opening weekend record for the month (currently held by I Am Legend with $77.2M), but it’s worth noting that its number isn’t very much higher […]

  OPENINGS:  None of the newcomers made much of an impression.  At the moment, MCFARLAND USA (Disney) is claiming a slim victory over THE DUFF (CBS/Lionsgate), $11.3M vs. $11M, but that’s based on a far more aggressive Sunday estimate by Disney (predicting a 30% Sunday drop vs 42%), and when the numbers are so close, […]

  Melissa McCarthy’s star vehicle TAMMY (Warners) may not be winning any critical plaudits (it’s at 19% positive on Rotten Tomatoes), but that’s not keeping her fans away, at least in the short term.  Tammy opened with $1.3M at Tuesday night shows, and while that’s far from the $5.5M that 22 Jump Street had last […]