Based on Friday’s grosses, weekend #17 of 2015 looks like $88 million for the top 12 films Friday-Sunday, better than it looked yesterday ($81 million) but still below the norm for this weekend.  A solid Saturday lifted the weekend estimates for most films at least somewhat, but the weekend rankings did not change materially. Opening at […]

  OPENINGS:  RISEN (Affirm/Columbia/Sony) topped the weekend’s arrivals with an $11.8M start that was above the $11.4M for War Room and the $9.2M for God’s Not Dead, although it was well below Heaven Is For Real‘s $22.5M.  The Christian genre has tremendous multiples–both God’s and War Room ended up at 6x their opening weekends–and Risen […]

Weekend #4 of 2016 is looking like $118 million for the top 12 films this weekend (see comparisons below). Dirty Grandpa from Lionsgate should open with $12.0 million Friday-Sunday. The film is on track for around $31 million domestic in its run. Overseas the film could bring in $18 million, giving it a worldwide box office target of $49 million. […]

  Franchise sequels are typically more frontloaded than the original installments, because there’s an established fanbase that wants to catch up with the latest update to the story.  For example, the first Hunger Games made $19.7M on its Thursday night, which made up part of a $67.3M opening day, while Catching Fire had $25.3M on Thursday […]

  OPENINGS:  None, really, although you could stretch and include THE PYRAMID (20th), an ultra-low budget, barely-marketed “found-footage” horror item that opened at just 589 theatres.  It made $458K on Friday, and probably won’t get much past $1M for the weekend, not enough to pay even for its very limited costs. HOLDOVERS:  Instead, for the […]

The Past Week: Total Box Office Volume All films in wide release playing between August 27 and September 2 grossed $133 million, fairly close to the same week last year (-2%) but up 7% from the four-year average for the week.  The past six weeks have actually been fairly close to the four-year average box […]

> In future weeks, we’ll have a spiffy chart to keep you current on the progress of our Summer Movie Blockbuster Draft, but for now it’s pretty simple: Team Metcalf THOR:  $84,752,317 Team Salem $0 Over at Team Salem, I’d like to note that this somewhat lopsided total is because none of my movies have […]

Weekend #37 of 2015 is looking like $65 million for the top 12 films this weekend, below the norm for this weekend (see comparisons below). The Visit from Universal should open with a $16.5 million opening weekend. Mediocre reviews so far: 53% positive at RottenTomatoes. The Visit is on track for around $44 million domestic. Overseas the film could bring in $50 […]